McDonald's uses 5G as a gimmick to sell chicken, but the real 5G still depends on the Internet of Things

In the past two days, a marketing campaign that originally only excited the food circle has suddenly become popular and attracted the attention of people in the communications circle. What is going on?

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It turns out it was because of McDonald’s 5G! This is probably what happened:

At around 9 am on April 13, McDonald’s official Weibo account posted several consecutive Weibo posts with the theme #我5G了#. The copy and posters of each Weibo post were full of the flavor of technology.

To judge whether a marketing campaign has a wide range of influence, you can see whether it is on the hot search list, such as Weibo hot search, Toutiao hot search, Zhihu hot search or Douyin hot search. But according to enthusiastic netizens, it seems that it was not arranged this time, emmmmmm~

However, the new 5G product, the world's first release, and the free trial all touch people's nerves. Although it did not become a hot search, this did not prevent many netizens from speculating about what this new product is.

After a simple sorting, there were probably several directions before:

• Food category: One is to play with homophonic puns, 5G = G block + G wing + G leg + G steak + G burger, 5 chicken means five parts of the chicken; another is that the new product has 5 characteristics, so 5G is used as a gimmick; and another is about the unit of weight, a king-level seasoning packet weighing 5g.
• Smart terminal category: Based on the words such as narrow-border display, ultra-wide-angle camera, crisp sound quality and support for facial recognition function extracted from the poster, it is speculated that it is a 5G smart terminal product, McDonald’s flagship mobile phone, or a self-service ordering machine.
• Mobile phone brand collaboration: It is reported that both Wei and Apple will release new products on April 15. In addition, the advertising copy and accompanying pictures themselves easily remind people of mobile phones. Therefore, it is natural to speculate that McDonald's will have a brand collaboration with one of the parties.

Speculations aside, this new product was finally unveiled this morning. As expected by netizens, it is the McMahon Crispy Chicken, which has five "black technologies" including "big chunks", "flavorful", "tender", "juicy" and "crispy".

Emmmmm~What should I say? Just give a thumbs up to this marketing gimmick.

However, in this era of information explosion, it is indeed difficult to achieve explosive publicity effects by relying on the power of a single product. Cross-border marketing is a very common marketing method. Coupled with the recent intensive release of 5G terminals, this time McDonald's cleverly took advantage of the 5G hotspot and combined it with its own products to leverage the marketing of new products.

McDonald’s is not the only one leveraging 5G marketing

2019 is recognized as the first year of 5G commercialization, and 5G will still be a very hot topic and focus this year. 5G, cloud computing, big data, sensors, IPv6, etc. are all important technologies in the era of the Internet of Things, but 5G is not like these Internet of Things related technologies. It is closer to the general public and more friendly to the people. Therefore, not only Internet of Things companies, but all kinds of companies are likely to seize this hot spot!

In fact, before McDonald's, there were already many cases of leveraging 5G marketing, some of which were real 5G and some were fake 5G, some were strongly related and some were weakly related:

• Speed ​​is the most important criterion for running, so whether a pair of running shoes can help people run faster has become a criterion for many people to measure a pair of running shoes. The most intuitive feeling of 5G is speed. Combining these two points, Nike's Pegasus product line has previously used 5G for marketing.
• As a well-known shopping platform, Suning has rarely invested 1 billion yuan in special subsidies for 5G replacement of new phones, and signed 5G strategic agreements with partners. In addition, as of September 2019, Suning has more than 200 5G experience stores, covering the first- and second-tier core cities across the country. Consumers can experience 5G terminal products of Suning's core partners in these stores. This series of operations means that Suning has "established diplomatic relations" with the concept of 5G.
• A jewelry company signed a "5G Strategic Cooperation Framework Agreement" with China Unicom. The cooperation includes providing high-quality services to China Unicom in terms of 5G network business consultation and business handling, providing a "green channel" for batch handling of 5G network business, and providing 5G network after-sales service. In this way, the jewelry company has taken advantage of the 5G concept.
• A certain clothing company proposed the concept of 5G borderless new retail. They analyzed the status of the single traditional marketing model of online telemarketing and offline entity in the clothing industry, and integrated the respective advantages of online and offline to improve the brand's marketing effect.
• China Telecom and Meituan jointly plan and promote co-branded card products. China Telecom provides users with preferential plans for calls, data traffic, 5G network access, etc., which are superimposed on the preferential rights and interests in various life service scenarios such as takeaway, catering, leisure and entertainment, and bicycles provided by Meituan. In this way, this cooperation is also a project cooperation involving 5G and new retail.
• ......

There is no doubt that everyone wants to join in the fun and see if their products can produce some magical "chemical reaction" with 5G. However, although it is good to take advantage of the situation, don't "overdo it". After all, not every "posture" of taking advantage of the situation is right. It is not a big deal if it fails to bring the expected effect. Some forced hot spots will also lead to the consequence of being "named".

Before brands take advantage of 5G, they should first understand what 5G is.

The so-called 5G communication refers to the fifth generation of mobile communication network. It is a general term for the next generation of communication network after the maturity of 4G communication technology. It has the characteristics of high speed, ubiquitous network, low power consumption and low latency. Its main application scenarios include eMBB (enhanced mobile broadband), uRLLC (ultra-reliable and low-latency connection) and mMTC (massive machine-type computing).

5G can roughly cover two mainstream frequency bands, one is sub 6GHz, which is not much different from the 4G LTE band we currently use; the other is above 24GHz, which is the millimeter wave band commonly heard today.

5G networks provide the most suitable wireless network in different environments through millimeter wave broadband technology that focuses on speed and sub 6GHz narrowband technology that focuses on low power consumption and wide coverage, so as to meet both short-distance and long-distance communication requirements. When high bandwidth (eMBB) and low latency (URLLC) are required, high-frequency millimeter wave bands are suitable, such as self-driving cars and remote surgery; when low power consumption, wide coverage and stable connection (mMTC) are required, sub 6GHz low-frequency bands are more suitable, such as smart city-related applications.

1. Interpretation of 5G hot words: micro base station

When communication technology is deployed to higher frequency bands, the diffraction ability of electromagnetic waves becomes weaker, and the transmission distance and coverage range will be relatively reduced. Therefore, in the 5G era, multiple micro base stations must be used to cover as many areas as possible.

2. 5G Hot Words: Massive MIMO

MIMO refers to multiple-input multiple-output, which means that multiple antennas are used for sending and receiving, making data transmission faster. According to the principle of electromagnetic waves, the shorter the wavelength, the smaller the antenna can be made. In the 5G era, as antennas gradually become millimeter-sized, more antennas can be packed into mobile terminals and micro base stations, allowing the existing MIMO to be enhanced to Massive MIMO, bringing the speed to a higher level.

3. 5G Hot Words: Beamforming

Just like a glowing light bulb, electromagnetic waves transmit signals by radiating in all directions. However, in actual needs, the signal only needs to be transmitted in a certain direction, which results in most of the electromagnetic wave energy being wasted. To solve this problem, beamforming technology is used. This technology can send and receive signals in a direction through an antenna array. It converts the existing omnidirectional coverage into precise directional transmission by superimposing the signals transmitted or received in a specific direction, which not only extends the transmission distance, but also greatly reduces signal interference.

The infinite possibilities of 5G and the Internet of Things

It is interesting to look at how people in the past predicted the future from this point in time.

Looking back at the time when 4G was first put into commercial use, no one knew what would happen in the future. It was predicted that 4G would allow viewing of high-definition videos, facilitate viewing of movies on mobile phones, and that live video would be applied to the news field. However, who would have thought that the complete explosion of short videos would also usher in an era of universal live video, turning cameras into input methods and short videos into the standard of expression. Of course, the rise of online payment, e-commerce, food delivery, taxi-hailing and other platforms are all disruptive results brought about by the 4G era.

At that time, most articles did not predict that 4G would cultivate the towering tree of mobile Internet. Today, we also have reason to believe that the fertile soil of 5G will bring more things beyond most people's imagination and derive more unexpected applications in the era of the Internet of Things.

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