There’s nothing better than the smell of a burger chargrilling over an open flame. That is, unless you’re vegetarian or can’t eat pork for religious reasons. Maybe you don’t like burgers. Okay, so there are several things that are- in reality- better than the smell of a burger chargrilling over an open flame but we can assure you of one thing, a fast food burger is not one of them.
It’s not for us to tell you the problems with fast food and to preach to you like grimy facsimiles of Nigel Slater would be hypocritical. We’ve all been drunk, hungry, in desperate need of an escape from the rain that we’ve been in one of the American burger giants- there’s no denying it. Find us someone who’s never been over the door and we’ll point and gawp in sheer amazement.
We can however, tell you the problems with fast food advertising. After all, that’s the entire point of this column. You see, fast food chains suffer from the same problem as booze peddlers: when all’s said and done, they’re advertising something that’s bad for you.
So how do you dress it up?
It’s relatively simple and you’ll be familiar with the way it’s done almost instantly. Groups are the usual ones like the KFC adverts where, on a lovely sunny day instead of having a barbeque, a group of family and friends have opted to share a feast of KFC delights that must have cost somewhere in the region of ?13,000 to put on the table. They’re laughing, larking about having a great time. Why? They’re sharing that grease around. Bargain bucket for one? Why not make that for four and quadruple your lifespan?
It’s easy.
However in recent years McDonalds- the last bastion of the seedless bun- have opted to show as many demographics in their restaurants as possible to prove that McDonalds is a classless, raceless, genderless outlet designed for both everyone and no-one in equal measure. It’s much like their customer service model.
They’ve moved away from gaudy luminous furnishings and away from the restaurant model that they began with in the 50s’ as a car-service diner. They’ve replaced most restaurants with a dull green ‘eco-cafe’ which is designed to “remind” their customers that what they’re eating is actually 100% beef that can be traced right the way back to the cage it came out of.
Their latest advert takes these values which they have espoused from on-high over the last couple of years and turns them into implied values, perhaps the most dangerous of the values.
This particular ad shows a loner. A cheery loner, we’ll grant you that but a loner nonetheless. It’s quite a concept to spend most of an advert for fast food with most of it spent wandering the streets of (what we assume is That London) and not focussing on the burgers and how full of meat they are. They’re implied values though. Wide demographic of people, home-spun, clean-cut chap doing some walking. He’s picked up a paper (probably The Mail) and is singing a song about being on the street where his sweetheart lives.
Nice, isn’t it?
“On The Street Where You Live” is a song which was originally used in the musical ‘My Fair Lady’ and has since been covered by a huge range of artists from Bobby Darin to Steve Hogarth from Marillion and is, largely speaking, quite a romantic number. Isn’t it the perfect song to sing to your sweetheart?
It’s not a huge leap of logic to assume that the young man in this advert is singing the song to the Big Mac which he is about to sink his teeth into. He’s about to eat the object of his desire. He’s fallen in love with a burger that he’s then going to devour. It’s a one minute tragedy.
If you’re to believe this advert, you’ll believe that McDonalds encourage the love of burgers with a strange serenade from a lovestruck 20-something. Does it make you want to eat one of their heavily-salted treats or vomit into a happy meal box? Either way it doesn’t matter. Where you stand on McDonalds, their products and their advertising is of little to no importance in the grand scheme of the Happy World of the Golden Arches. All we’re trying to say is; bring back the Hamburglar.
Lisa says
That McDonalds is in Newcastle!