McDonald's had long been the Kmart of fast food joints, and the obvious thing for it to do was rebrand itself. It has responded to health concerns about its products by selecting a non-trans fat cooking oil, and begun the process of remodeling and redecorating locations to give them a cleaner, more modern appearance. In a nod to America's changing demographics, it launched the Me Encanta campaign to target Latinos.
I'd be loving it if this marked a real change in how McDonald's sees its customers. But I'm not loving it. For example, take this commercial:
Without McDonald's coffee, this unshaven slob is an even less desirable man-child.
Poor "Tim" hasn't fully woken up yet. His roomie––still on that Modern Warfare 2 bender––gets the cold shoulder. So does the old dude walking his ankle-biter dog through an upper class neighborhood. But when he hears the words "premium roast coffee for just a dollar," he perks right up.
It's just like somebody has told him that he should be a total zombie until he gets some. Nobody's so standoffish before his morning coffee that he won't respond to a girl flirting on the bus.
The target consumer is nearly middle-aged but still co-habitating with his college buds in a house well above their pay grades. His shabby appearance can be traced to his body type and long, greasy hair, rather than to his clothes. A sucker for branding terms like "premium roast coffee" and its inexpensiveness, he's frugal but not cheap. He's a complete asshole until he gets his morning joe. In short, he's trash: a slave to the winds of consumerism, a dick to everyone he encounters, and, by all appearances, a total slob.
I have a general beef with men being portrayed in TV shows and commercials as bums, and lament the rise of the "guy"––male human beings trapped in the doldrums between adolescence and manhood. Tim may be 35-years-old, but he's still living with a room mate. Charlie Sheen plays a slightly less rich and famous version of himself on Two and a Half Men. Ladies, if you had to choose just one, who would it be?
Last night I was watching the World Series when on came yet another McDonald's commercial, in which a man driving a convertible muses that life is better with the top down. And having the top down is better with loud music, which is better with his girlfriend in the car, who is more fun when the sun's setting, sitting on a rooftop––and that the jell that holds this all together is…a Mac 'n fries. Unfortunately, nobody has posted the video (it's not particularly funny or flashy), but somewhere, it's out there.
The commercial reminded me of those "Priceless" MasterCard ads:
Somehow even this huge credit card company understands the difference between what's free and what costs money.
MasterCard sells the means to get what you want. Why carry around all that cash, when this slim little credit card does the same thing? But MasterCard clearly understands the difference between the things we buy and the feelings those things elicit––but alluding to that fact without telling us as much helps blur that distinction. These commercials step right up to the line of telling us that money can buy happiness, but don't cross it, because even the laziest, most idiotic couch potato is likely to leap to his swollen, pasty feet and scream "bullshit!" at his TV the instant that happens.
Last night, McDonald's crossed that line. In the reality of the commercial––and you kind of have to see it to believe it––everything, from the car, to the girl, to the sunset, is contingent on a burger and fries. They're not the capstone to the evening: They're the foundation. Like Tim the Coffee Prick, the pleasures in life simply don't exist without an inexpensive but delicious item off the McDonald's Value Menu.
McDonald's has tried to insinuate itself into your day by telling you that its food is the center of the universe. This isn't an uncommon advertising tactic, but few campaigns have succeeded in proposing a reality in which, without a certain product, the world around us and our relationships lose meaning. Tim the coffee guy is an unrepentant douche bag until Premium Roast Coffee brightens his day, and your date is a flavorless caricature of romance until you throw down for two Big Macs and fries.
Worse still is that, when I'm on a date, I'm not in a particular rush, and the last thing I need to project to my lady friends is that I'm cheap. So why go to McDonald's? The answer, McDonald's would have us believe, is that cheap grub on the go just feels good. McDonald's isn't garbage––that was the old McDonald's.
It's classy. They swear.
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