McDonald’s, Walmart and IBM: Marketing Brings Three Icons Back from the Brink

Geoffrey Precourt

Reporting from the ANA's annual Masters of Marketing conference, Warc's U.S. editor, Geoffrey Precourt relays presentations from McDonald's, Walmart and IBM - all of which focus on how these iconic brands came across hard times but navigated themselves out of trouble using marketing-led, customer-focused strategies.

McDonald’s, Walmart and IBM: Marketing Brings Three Icons Back from the Brink

Geoffrey PrecourtWarc

“We messed up.”

These three little words are rarely used by image-conscious brand guardians in a public forum.

But, tough times drive tough confessions. And, at the 2009 Association of National Advertisers “Masters of Marketing” annual conference in Phoenix, Arizona three major marketers - McDonald’s, Walmart and IBM - readily used them in front of 1,200 delegates.

For McDonald’s, the mistake was focusing too much on the stores and not paying attention to their key customers. At Walmart, it was slipping away from the founder’s...

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