Absurdly Driven looks at the world of business with a skeptical eye and a firmly rooted tongue in cheek.
The problem with innovation is that too many people talk it and claim it.
Rather fewer actually deliver it.
I am moved, therefore, by McDonald’s, which managed to create something so simple, intelligent and — at least to some people — useful that it can never be undone.
For its Canadian arm got together with a couple of larger brains than its own — from STACKLAB and the University of Waterloo — and turned those recyclable drinks trays into boomboxes.
That sentence feels like it was written by someone who has drunk too much Grappa in Napa, I know.
But please look at this video and perhaps even marvel at how you can turn the mundane into the Happy Mondays.
Apparently, boomboxes are based on “very simple amplification concepts.”
I always thought they were based on a lot of bass and a propensity to annoy you on the beach.
Still, here is how to turn your drinks tray upside down, make a couple of soi-disant speakers out of two flaps at the bottom, and place your phone in the middle.
You might think this was just a little amusement to peddle as PR. You’d be right, of course.
However, the Everyday Foodie reports that customers at the Woodbine Beach branch of McDonald’s in Toronto were given these things in a McFlurry of celebration on Saturday.
I know that some will be disturbed that, if this became a nationwide thing, the serenity of their local McDonald’s would be forever threatened.
I, though, can only think that this represents an extremely hopeful step in integrating creative thinking into the staid world of fast food.
Just imagine if you could turn your McDonald’s beverage cup into a microphone. Or even a megaphone.
Wouldn’t that be uplifting?
I foresee a rival to American Idol in which all the participants make their music using recyclable items from McDonald’s.
It will be called America’s Got Musical Nuggets. Or something else.