Absurdly Driven looks at the world of business with a skeptical eye and a firmly rooted tongue in cheek.
Those who write fascinating books about sales and marketing call these things pain points.
I suffer from severe pain points when I read most books about sales and marketing.
But there are certain things about a brand experience that just make you want to scream “Why? Why? Why?” over and over again.
With flying, for example, your pain points begin when you try to book a flight, continue when you try to check-in, increase when you get to the gate and peak when you board the plane.
With McDonald’s, though, there’s one pain point that makes customers’ suffering crash through their pain barrier until no amount of tweeting can assuage the horror.
The source is broken ice-cream machines.
I wrote about this suffering earlier this year. McDonald’s had finally promised to introduce new ice cream machines that will require less than the four-hour maintenance of the old ones.
This can’t be done overnight, however.
Please, therefore, offer extreme hosannas to Raina McLeod. For she has invented the Ice Check app.
“Ice Check will tell you if the machines are UP or DOWN in real-time, using crowd-sourced info and input from participating locations,” boasts the app’s blurb on iTunes.
It’s quite a promise. One that, like McDonald’s new ice cream machines, hasn’t quite been delivered everywhere yet.
The app came out in May and some commenters on iTunes are miffed that their own locations aren’t immediately presented.
Indeed, the app’s blurb exclaims: “At McDonald’s but not craving ice cream? Ask about it anyway! Our community-based system relies on your contributions to the database: so if you see something, say something!”
Yes, the app’s pain point is that it depends on you taking great pains to identify whether your local McDonald’s has a working ice cream machine.
We’re all in this together, though.
This is one area where it doesn’t matter if you’re Democrat or Republican, tall or short, Giants or Jets, Giants or Dodgers, or Bieber or The Weeknd.
The need for working McDonald’s ice cream machines outweighs most other human needs.
Fripperies like everlasting love or world peace, for example.
Ice Check therefore deserves support. Just imagine the palpitations of joy, the shiverings of exalted shock when you go to the app and discover your McFlurry is just a couple of minutes away.