Democracy

The gloves are off here... 

The Americans and the French have diametrically opposite views on the relationship between quality and quantity. To a Frenchman, anything that is worth savouring must, of necessity, be available only in limited quantities. To an American, anything that's any good must be made available to everyone. Ford, Coke and McDonalds are archetypal American brands just as Chanel, Louis Vuitton and Chateau Petrus are archetypal French ones.

The French would never try to bring democracy to anyone else, as obviously these foreigners would be incapable of appreciating it.

Me, I prefer the American approach. Indeed I am much taken with an Andy Warhol quotation along the lines of "what I like about Coke is that the President of the United States can't get a better Coke than the bum on the street." Really great brands should be universal. (When you think about it, the huge explosion in the value of luxury goods brands is evidence of a social malaise).
Though France is sporadically wonderful, it suffers from a terrible lack of scalability. A good cuisine remains trapped within its region. A great cafe or restaurant remains a great cafe or restaurant - with a single outlet. Part of the reason for this is that the French see the principal purpose of a job as supplying status, not money. So your typical Frog restaurateur would rather operate a single restaurant in Paris patronised by a few cabinet ministers than operate a vast chain of eateries serving the general public. This explains why the great majority of French Schoolchildren aspire to be civil servants when they grow up. And why it is no co-incidence that succès d’estime is a French phrase.

I once asked a Frenchman why, given that they had "the best food in the world" they had not attempted to compete with McDonalds. "Why not," I wondered "a nationwide chain of restaurants selling cider and galettes?". "But that is a Breton cuisine," he replied.

It is fashionable to despise popularist brands in Britain, too. And so a particular brand of British middle class twat regards Brie as healthy and burgers as dodgy. And I am so glad they do.

You see, one of the great things about McDonalds is this: that the people who "don't go to McDonalds" don't go there. If you live in the South East of England this is wonderful - it means you can go there with your kids and be guaranteed that you won't be exposed to any of the hand-wringing tossers who say things like "Jolyon's allergic to chips, actually".

I like brands like easyJet, IKEA, etc which are actually anti-snobbish and act as snob-repellents. When not American, these brands are often Scandinavian, Australian or Dutch. They are gloriously non pretentious, and attract a similar clientele.

And of course this works the other way round. There are plenty of brands which, while appealing in themselves, attract a peculiarly revolting class of user. BMW above all (I was once upgraded at Avis to a BMW 5-series and refused it) or the Apple laptop. My aversion to British Airways is similar - anything the airline does is counterbalanced by the need to share a plane with a lot of lower-middle class ugly people with an unusual penchant for doilies.

Guess the decor.

Look at the picture. Lounging around the showroom at Ikea? No. Sucking down a burger at McDonald's. McDonald's is re-inventing itself and going right-brain at the same time. What is being communicated here? Meaning and emotion. Gone is the functionality of the red and yellow plastic (get 'em in, feed 'em then get 'em out) and bring on in the muted olives, terracotta, and blond wood tones (let 'em stay for a while with their fancy computer thingies), appealing to our senses and enticing us to hang around and feel comfortable.