McDONALD’S IS “LOVIN’ IT”
As reported in The Guardian, “At first glance the text of the advert running in national newspapers [in th UK] today reads like an attack on the burger and fries giant McDonald’s.
“The advert says it supports the core argument of a film where a man who eats burgers for 30 days piles on weight to such a health damaging extent that his doctors order him to stop eating them.
“But it is not placed by campaigners savaging the firm’s nutritional record — it is placed by McDonald’s.
“So concerned is the multinational about the U.S. independent film Super Size Me, which [screened this past weekend] at the Edinburgh film festival and goes on general release in Britain in three weeks’ time, that it decided to mount the unconventional campaign.”
The ads are reportedly not unlike those the fast food corporation had previously run in Australia. Unlike the Austrailan ads, however, which challenged the conclusions of the documentary, the UK ads reportedly “support” the conclusions of Super Size Me film but challenge the film’s methodology: “The ad claims the film is flawed because an average customer would take six years to eat the same amount of burgers as the filmmaker ate. It also claims the weight gain was exaggerated because the filmmaker cut his physical activity to a bare minimum.”
As cited on the JKL Blog: [McDonald's rival] “Subway Restaurants, a U.S. sandwich chain, recently withdrew a highly controversial German ad campaign [promoting Super Size Me] due to mounting pressure from employees, consumers, think tanks, members of congress and bloggers” [which attacked the ad as anti-American]. The headline of the ad, which features a cartoon of an obese Statue of Liberty reads, in German, “Why are Americans so fat?”
“Earlier this year, Larry Light, McDonald Corp.’s chief marketing officer, said McDonald’s has adopted a new marketing technique that he dubbed ‘brand journalism’, reports the Free Enterprise Blog… His insight? Offering a free DVD of Super Size Me for every ice tea sold.”
