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From TFA: > “We realize that some of the visuals may not already be strongly linked in consumer minds to the nutrient they are meant to depict in all markets.”
by nicky0 9y ago
From TFA:
> “We realize that some of the visuals may not already be strongly linked in consumer minds to the nutrient they
are meant to depict in all markets.”
> “We intend to promote understanding of the images through supporting materials in Europe, from web sites
to images explained on tray liners and via in-store displays,”
...
> “After repeated exposure to these images,
customers should eventually grasp their meaning, with or without printed labels next to them.”
- goldenkey 9y ago"Just keep eating at McDonalds. Once you become a frequent consumer of our Lardo-o-Lay, you will DEFINITELY know the McUniversal symbol for fat." - Ronald McDonald
- skookumchuck 9y agoAfter repeated exposure to these words, customers should eventually grasp their meaning, with or without printed translations next to them.
- jhbadger 9y agoYeah -- think about a lot of commonly accepted icons, like for nuclear radiation or biohazards. Or even the weird icons like those for "pause" and "record" on media devices -- these aren't intuitive icons, we've just gotten used to them.
- gumby 9y agoI remember when those (>> for fast fwd, etc) were introduced by Japanese cassette tape companies in the early 70s. They were somewhat controversial!
- skookumchuck 9y agoNone of the icons McDonald's chose as their final ones had any meaning to me without a translation chart. How is that different from learning what a word means? Didn't anyone at McDonald's dare to question the basic idea of this?
- microcolonel 9y agoAre you saying it would be better to just teach their customers the English words for these things? Esperanto? I mean, I might probably agree with that, but I don't know that the customers would.
- skookumchuck 9y ago> Are you saying it would be better to just teach their customers the English words for these things? Yes. It's the same amount of teaching and learning. Actually, it's probably less of both, because: 1. A fair fraction (most?) of the customers would already know some english, whereas zero know what those icons mean. 2. Knowledge of english words is valuable to anyone and is transferable to other domains. Knowledge of McDonald's icons is useless outside of McDonald's. 3. Deciphering english is a trivial peck at an online dictionary. Whatcha gonna do about an icon? English words are creeping in everywhere anyway.
- woobar 9y agoThey explains it in the paper. There are cultural and legal limitations. So your knowledge of English will not help when you travel to a country that requires packaging in native language. On the other hand, learning 'universal' icons will help you everywhere.
- skookumchuck 9y agoAn english word is not harder to learn than an icon. It is not harder to attach a cultural and legal explanation of the usage of a word than an icon. I do enjoy the irony of evading laws that require packaging in the native language, so McDonald's invents a new non-native language instead.
- baddox 9y ago> McDonald’s faced this daunting challenge with its recent Nutrition Information Initiative (NII). The company wanted to make nutrition information more accessible and understandable to the average consumer, and determined through extensive research that visual icons representing key food nutrients (protein, for example) were the appropriate course of action. It sounds like McDonald's had decided the icons were the way to go before bringing in this translation company.
- bitwize 9y agoThe media playback icons were supposedly inspired by Wassily Kandinsky.
- s_kilk 9y agoHmm, both Biohazard and Radiation symbols were chosen because they look (at least somewhat) ugly and dangerous even to the unfamiliar.
- Retric 9y agoWhat I found most interesting was not the rather meaningless icon choices, but the incredibly deceptive dotted line seen on page 12. It's basically anchoring people in a meaningless way such that not everything seems bad. Without the line it's like 50% more sodium relative to the number of calories I am eating. That's terrible. With the line ehh, I guess everything looks ok.
- callumlocke 9y agoPage 12 not page 2
- microcolonel 9y agoIs the dotted line deceptive? It just seems like a ⅓DV line (for the large number of people who eat three meals in a day), which clearly shows you that this meal is high in sodium, so should be accompanied with other meals which are lower in sodium.
- Retric 9y agoYou are falling for the framing. If something is 28% of your DV worth of calories it's not a meal. The line makes it seem that as long as each 'bad' item is under the line it's ok. Sure the fries are over it, but the burger only 1/2 way their so that's probably ok.
- factsaresacred 9y agoThe line simply shows one third of your recommended daily allowance (based of the somewhat popular notion of "three square meals a day" I imagine). If anything it's useful. A single serving that breaches the line should be treated with caution, making it straightforward to understand which foods are contributing disproportionately to your daily allowance.
- Retric 9y agoConsider your looking at fries and it's 30% of your daily sodium intake which is below the line. But, it's only 10% of your daily calorie intake because it's a side for one meal. In that context it's sodium relative to calories that's important or sodium in combination with the rest of your meal. In none of those cases is a line at 33.3% useful for anything.
- 13of40 9y agoSo why not just snap to simplified Chinese? You'd get a billion person headstart and the ideograms are probably just as arbitrary.
- Banthum 9y agoI did have that thought! But most likely these are all several characters in Chinese.
- claar 9y agoprotein: 蛋白 fat: 脂肪 salt: 盐 carbohydrate: 糖类 calorie: 千卡 I dunno...
- yorwba 9y agoI just checked a bag of noodles I had lying around, and it uses protein: 蛋白质, fat: 脂肪, sodium: 钠, carbohydrates: 碳水化合物, energy content: 能量 (measured in kJ: 千焦) So there is the additional problem of a. measuring different things (or using different units) and b. using different words to mean the same things.
- yummybear 9y agoThis is beyond stupid. Why use all the effort to explain the icons, when simply using a boring text suffices. It almost seems like they purposely don't want consumers to understand the information.