McDonald’s News of using Fresh Beef creates Free Advertising for Wendy’s

Today I heard the repeated news broadcasted that McDonald’s restaurants were experimenting with offering fresh beef patties (instead of using frozen) at some of your California locations and probably if successful they will expand this across the country to other locations. What interested me was how the announcer started the news, “Where’s the Beef”? Anyone who was of fast food customer age in 1984 remembers this in Wendy’s commercials.

The phrase first came to public attention in a U.S. television commercial for the Wendy's chain of hamburger restaurants in 1984. In reality, the strategy behind the campaign was to distinguish competitors (McDonald's and Burger King) big name sandwiches (Big Mac and Whopperrespectively) from Wendy's 'modest' Single by focusing on the large bun used by the competitors and the larger beef patty in Wendy's sandwich.

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So how many listeners hearing this “news” thought of Wendy’s when the phrase “Where’s the beef” question was posed, and then surprised to hear this followed up with a Wendy’s competitor’s announcement? I was intrigued so I typed the search phrase in Google and I still get Wendy’s commercial links. They were very funny and more importantly “memorable” which can’t be said about every “funny” commercial.

When you modify the search phrase to “where’s the beef McDonald’s” then you see the links about today’s press releases.

Being the “Bricks to Clicks Marketing Consultant” I wondered if the phrase originally by Wendy’s was registered. There is a great article, "Where's The Beef?" Gets Resurrected: “Why It's Important To Maintain Your Trademark Registrations” by Matthew Kreutzer READ MORE

But that was written in 2011, did Wendy’s fall asleep at the drivethrough and missed “maintaining” this as Matthew explains?

Bird Dog Bay Where's The Beef Necktie (Coral)

CafePress Where's The Beef? Toddler T-Shirt - 3T Pink

Mascow Men's Beef Shirts For Men Farmers Plain Ringer T Shirts

I really like the Nolo website and found this information. Here's an article by Rich Stim, Attorney; note that even in his example about slogans, he chose to use this timeless gem by Wendy's: 

There are two types of slogans for which applicants commonly seek federal trademark registration:

• Slogans that are protectable as trademarks such as “Where’s the Beef” or “Don’t Leave Home Without It,” that are tied to an advertising campaign or used to sell a product or service, and
• Slogans or short phrases that placed on merchandise such as bumper stickers that are intended to amuse or provoke people such as “I’m with Stupid” or “My Other Car is an Accordion.” These are usually not protectable under trademark law because they are considered ornamental or informational – that is, there sole purpose is to amuse, entertain, provoke or inform—not to sell a product. To acquire federal registration the trademark applicant must create a consumer association with a product or service (for example, Honk if You Sell Car Horns for an applicant that sells car horns). 

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Maybe from all of this we learn that we need to first pay our creators who come up with slogans like this, and pay them well. Then continue to "maintain" the registrations; renew them because when they are good, they continue to market the company long after the company has moved on with other slogans. 

Well, after all my research, I wasn’t able to find out if the phrase “where’s the beef” is still trademarked and if McDonald’s may have a beef to settle for using it but regardless who uses it today, in the ears of those (at least over 30) hear it, will attribute it to Wendy’s. I for one, every time I heard this today got a craving for Dave’s favorite old fashioned cheeseburgers; now that’s better!

Ter Scott is the Bricks to Clicks Marketing Consultant and available for private consultation and public speaking. He is the author of many books on Amazon Kindle including “Personal PR, Get What you Want by Helping Others get What they Want” www.terscott.com/contact