Bundle up for the winter!

I don’t frequent McDonald’s much anymore now that my kids have outgrown Happy Meals. But I happened to be in there yesterday (buying a gift card) and witnessed a befuddled youngster turn to mom in desperation after 5 menu questions (yes, 5) and say “why do I have to make so many decisions?” McDonald’s new Happy Meal format gives your toddler choices at entrée, sides (2 of them), drink and toy. This seems ludicrous to me. Adults can’t even order off the menu without pause (despite staring at for 5 minutes while standing in line), so why would you ask a 4 year old to do it?

Don’t get me wrong—I wholeheartedly applaud McDonald’s efforts to try and “de-fat” the old Happy Meals. They weren’t that great to begin with, but have they gone too far? And then it got me thinking about the beauty of BUNDLING. Why not offer three choices, already pulled together. Sure, there may be a few kids out there that one thing from column A and one thing from column B (although they’d have to be able to read to know that) but most kids, and certainly most parents, would rather have fewer decisions to be made at the register. They already do this for grown-ups with value meals, why don’t they do it for kids?

Striking the perfect balance between not enough choice and too much choice is a delicate thing. We encourage our clients to source content from our sharing network to fill gaps in their catalog offerings. But we certainly don’t encourage them to bring content in where they already have 5 titles of their own. Why create more confusion? The functionality we’ve added in terms of being able to bundle course offerings does more to help with this delicate balance than anything else. Offering a pre made “kit” of courses to satisfy a particular requirement is a smart move and it also allows you to layer in progressive discounting to help motivate the sale. It makes the selection easy for your customers and more efficient for you with fewer transactions to manage. And BONUS, we’ve noticed an uptick in our client revenues from those that are offerings bundles, anywhere from 5 to 20%.

I felt like offering the McDonald’s employee at the counter my suggestions on how to improve the Happy Meal situation, but then I realized he doesn’t make pricing policy, and he would have probably thought I was a loony tune. Maybe I’ll send an email to Corporate HQ and see what happens.

In the meantime, I hope you are “bundling up” for the holidays and beyond!