At the start of last year's air war over Kosovo, there were seven McDonald's outlets in Belgrade. And while their artillery and air forces were exchanging fire over Kashmir last year, Indians and Pakistanis were still munching on Macs — "lamburgers" in the Indian case, since the chain has eschewed beef there out of respect for Hindu dietary customs. And only weeks before the latest intifada began, the Palestinian Authority was trying to interest Mickey D's in setting up shop in a series of malls planned for such latter-day hotspots as Kalkilya, Tulkarm, Bethlehem and Ramallah.
Far from having them sing in "perfect harmony," buying the world a Coke has simply ensured that you're more likely to find the combatants on both sides of any regional conflict today drinking the same soda when in need of a pause that refreshes. And the implications for marketers, of course, can present nightmares for the head office.
A new promotion by McDonald's in Saudi Arabia, for example, may throw its management into a quiet apoplexy: The BBC reports that Saudi McDonald's franchise holders have announced that during the month of Ramadan, they'll donate 26 cents out of the price of each burger to Palestinian children's hospitals. While there's nothing controversial about supporting children's hospitals per se, the move came as a direct response to mounting calls throughout the Arab world for boycotts of American goods to protest U.S. support for Israel — indeed, Saudi Arabia has offered treatment in its own hospitals for Palestinian youths wounded in clashes with Israeli troops. McDonald's officials would be forgiven for feeling a little uneasy, in light of Burger King's experience in the region last year: The company was forced under threat of a boycott throughout the Islamic world to withdraw its Whoppers from a food court in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank, but then found itself denounced by pro-Israel groups.
But such are the vagaries of globalization. Fast-food franchises are the Marines of globalization, always establishing the first beachhead in previously closed economies. And that means they're also accustomed to taking a lot of fire. A crowd of Cairo students looking to vent its rage against U.S. support for Israel won't get within a mile of Washington's heavily fortified embassy, but it won't have much trouble finding an American fast-food outlet — as KFC discovered to its detriment last month. And with some 39 McDonald's outlets now operating in Egypt, it's hardly surprising that Middle Eastern franchise owners are developing seemingly unorthodox marketing tactics.
American fast-food chains have become the lightning rod for anti-U.S. rage worldwide over the past decade. From Bombay to Rome, London to Mexico City, the wide windows of the fast food franchises have become something of a traditional target for crowds protesting everything from the bombing of Serbia or the entry of U.S. corporations into India's catering market to globalization in general. U.S. embassies may be impregnable, but the wide windows of McDonald's and KFC are a tempting forest of windmills for Nike-clad Quixotes everywhere in the world who want to tilt at symbols of American influence.
Being in the firing line, of course, makes the fast-food chains do their best to fit in with the local culture, adapting the menu and the marketing to reflect local tastes and concerns. Hence the Indian "lamburger" or the fact that beer is served in McDonald's in Germany and France. The object of the globalizing corporation is to "indigenize" itself as quickly as possible. McDonald's may have been forbidden fruit when it first rolled into post-communist Moscow in 1991, but if all goes according to plan the next generation will know it simply as a local burger joint where the staff, for some unknown reason, smile more than is the norm in Russia.
To "indigenize" themselves abroad, of course, fast-food chains also face pressure to march in step with the passions of the natives — even when that involves biting the hand that reared it. Last year, ads published by McDonald's France used "Ugly American" caricatures to plant the Golden Arches firmly on the European side of the conflict with the U.S. over beef imports. "What I don't like about McDonald's France," says an overweight U.S. cowboy in one ad, "is that it doesn't buy American beef." The ad specifies that French McDonald's uses only French beef, to "guarantee maximum hygienic conditions" — Europe is citing health concerns in its bid to ban the imports of hormone-treated American beef.
The idea of an American chain restaurant trying to position itself as the official sandwich of an anti-U.S. trade crusade may seem somewhat treasonable, but the logic of globalization suggests that within a generation, corporations and products may lose their "national" identity. Nobody in Europe thinks of Fords as American cars, quite simply because they've been made in local plants, according to designs tailored for European markets, for more than half a century. And if all goes according to plan, 10 or 20 years from now an anti-American mob may charge right by a McDonald's without as much as lifting a stone. Because like the Ford logo for the protesters of today, the next generation may not know the origins of the Golden Arches.
That also means, of course, that Americans abroad lured inside by the familiar iconography may find the menu, and the attitude, rather foreign.