It's Steve (now in blog form)

Let’s play a word association game.  I’ll say a word.  You say the first word that pops into your mind.  Ready?

Nuggnuts

What word did you think of?  That’s pretty bad right?  It’s definitely something you wouldn’t say in front of your grandma.  I imagine it in contexts including:
“Hey, nuggnuts, get off my lawn!”
“He had nuggnuts, but the a round of penicillin cleared it up.”
“Nuggnuts is just another word for nothing left to lose.”

Nuggnuts is actually the new massive marketing campaign from McDonalds around fans of Chicken Nuggets.  They are driving folks to nuggnuts.com.  They’ve set up a nuggnuts Facebook group (another example of poor decision making on this campaign). They are running tons of tv spots around trying to coin this term.  This is all dumb.  Until they showed the url in the commercial, I was pretty sure they were advertising numbnuts.  I am definitely not in the market for numbnuts.  This is not good.

This is an example of the agency system run amok.  Generally, bad campaigns like this are born on a “storyboard” (note: a storyboard is a tool for when you run out of good ideas and are trying to dress up a bad one).  The storyboard is then presented by the agency to the client. Usually the client is initially uncertain.  The agency then says things like:
“Don’t worry, we’re experts.”
“But this tested really well.”
“We’re co-opting youth culture.”
“Let’s get some cocktails.”

At this point most clients fall under the hypnotic sway of the agency and spend money they shouldn’t  on a campaign that isn’t going to help their brand. Or, in this case, on a campaign that sounds like a venereal disease/racial slur.

Here’s the part that blows my mind.  Not only do they think this is going to work, McDonalds+agency think people are going to love it to the point of buying t-shirts and bumper stickers.  Are they insane?  At what point do they think people are going to be sitting on their couch and say, “Holy crap, I should buy a Chicken McNugget mug!!”

Don’t get me wrong, I love Chicken McNuggets. I was practically raised on them (may have something to do with my never hitting my growth spurt).  But if continuing to order them forces me into the nuggnut category, I may have to reconsider the Fillet-o-Fish.

Be Sociable, Share!

•