Yesterday as I was writing about the medium and the message of McDonald’s, I started to think about the message that McDonald’s tries to convey through its content, i.e. its marketing. We all know what it is:

I found this interesting because what it means is that the gist of McDonald’s marketing is based on an assertion of desirability, or “goodness.”

“I’m lovin’ it” roughly translates to: “see, it is good to eat.”

This seems ironic when put in context of our discussion yesterday, in which we discovered that the underlying message of McDonald’s business and offering is “fast and cheap.”

Now, when you see the words “fast” and “cheap” together, “good” usually follows, but only in reference to the classic trilemma:

Fast, cheap, or good. Pick two.

It’s as if McDonald’s knows that their “meta-message” is “fast and cheap,” so they use their marketing to fill in the “good” which is naturally assumed to be incompatible with the first two.

Notice though that McDonald’s rarely advertises directly for “fast and cheap” in their marketing. They don’t have to. It is the message which already permeates everything they do.

In other words, it’s what McDonald’s doesn’t say which turns out to be their real message.