This McDonald’s talk reminds me of another tone-deaf/out of touch commercial. A year or so ago I saw an ad for a retro-fyed McDonald’s that played on the nostalgia of generations Z-ennials and older for the bright, McDonaldslandy places of their youth. This made me think that they were actually re-rebranding instead of just putting out a commercial about how great their places used to be.
If they’ve gone retro anywhere, in any aspect, or for any time, I haven’t seen any evidence of it. So that makes me less likely to go to McDonald’s in the future rather than more, especially since if they actually bring back the vibe of the past, they won’t convince me of it with a similar ad.
Would love to hear thoughts on this 2018 doc from people in this thread who work(ed) in advertising, and anyone else, for that matter Icarus Films: Propaganda: The Manufacture of Consent It’s about advertising and especially Edward Bernays, a “double nephew” of Sigmund Freud and famous ad/PR person
I remember a Cadillac ad* from the late sixties that was all that. It showed a golfer leaving a country club and his caddy looking after him. Caddilac, because some day…
While that’s certainly a possibility, the first time I can recall hearing someone say “I was going to hit that” in reference to sex was in 2004’s Dawn of the Dead remake. It might very well be the exact kind of plausible denaibility some companies would court, but I doubt McDonald’s with their family friendly advertisements really wanted to court that kind of controversy plausible deniability or now. Advertisers aren’t infallible, as this thread is testament to, and I think it’s more likely someone at McDonald’s didn’t understand the idio fully. Probably several someones.
I’ve actually been in one of those retro McD’s – several times. Typically before or after seeing a movie in a nearby AMC Theater. That location went out of business long before COVID; the smallish shopping mall it was next to got redeveloped into a big Target.
Here’s how the entrance looked.
ETA: One of those pay-by-the-pound takeout places was down the hall from that McD’s. It closed before the McD’s did.
There’s a McDonald’s at the corner of University and Markham in Little Rock they built 10 or so years ago with the retro golden arches look. But for the most part all the other recent McDonald’s construction have been rather bland. These days they’re pivoting away from serving customers indoors to favor take out, drive through, and delivery.
This likely varies widely by location and franchisee. The two McDonald’s restaurants near me are closed by 11pm, and don’t re-open until around 5am for breakfast.
Yes. Coming less than a year after 9/11, it was very insensitive. There were old posters still up, begging for any info about missing loved ones. Living in NYC, it made me (perhaps unreasonably) upset.
The most recent Tremfya commercial must be aimed at idiots. Young woman with reddish scabs on one of her arms. The announcer talks about her problem. Cut to a dreamy scene of her romping of a tropical island beach, and the voice-over says, “Now imagine being a million miles away!”
Yeah. Imagine choking and dying in the cold loneliness of space.
There’s a new(er) ad with John Walsh where he’s touting a pain reliever, and looks like he’s aged at least ten years from the polo ponies ad. The way it appears, he’s gone from exercising the ponies to needing help getting to the bathroom.
One the subject of dreadful health product ads, there’s the one for an ear cleaner that shows a man and his dog, with the man rootling around in his ear and coming out with a wad of something which he gazes at perplexedly. . Then they show two test tubes containing fluid and gobs of earwax. Naturally, the tube with Miracle Wax Dissolver shows the earwax glob breaking up into smaller globules before our very eyes.
You’d think that even victims of outer ear clogging would find the ad too repulsive to sit through.
The two weirdest McDonald’s experiences I’ve ever had:
Twin Cities, late 1970s, where my junior high band went for a trip, and that’s where we ate before attending a live theater performance. One of my friends summed it up this way: “That was the fanciest McDonald’s I’ve ever seen.” IIRC, they had chandeliers and (probably plastic) ivy all over the place.
Also in east-central Minnesota, 1991: Returning from a canoe trip in the Boundary Waters after what for me was a semester from hell, we stopped for lunch at a McDonald’s that had something odd about it that we couldn’t quite figure out, until I summed it up: “This place looks like a bathroom.” It was done in tasteful (ha!) shades of pink, mauve, and lavender. I also remember that this was where I’ve had my only Big Mac. It was OK.
I’m sure it wasn’t intentional, but was incredibly tone deaf. My sister worked at WTC, and if she hadn’t stopped first at Century 21 after getting off her train, well…
Emotions were pretty raw in NYC for the next few years.
The Charmin commercial where the animated mama bear says “My kids can’t hide anything from me. Especially when it comes to toilet paper!”
Ugh eck pew. She’s suspicious they’re not using the toilet paper she bought and smuggled in Charmin knockoffs. She’s somehow examining their used toilet paper before they flush it. This is all sorts of wrong.
. Then they show two test tubes containing fluid and gobs of earwax. Naturally, the tube with Miracle Wax Dissolver shows the earwax glob breaking up into smaller globules before our very eyes. 