It's Steve (now in blog form)

I may have been overly critical of McDonalds in my earlier post.  In retrospect, they could have developed campaigns that were far more offensive or obviously out of touch.  In fact, some of you were good enough to point some of them out.  So, without further ado, I give you… DAH DAH DAH!…MORE MCDONALDS MARKETING DISASTERS! (Thanks go to all of you that contributed).

I’d totally have sex with that cheeseburger- McDonalds needs to hire someone who is under 30 to proof read their copy.  Having BET on your cable box does not qualify you to use “slang”.

Did no one think to check out the etymology of “I’d hit it”? For your reference from urbandictionary.com: Vernacular commonly used by males, meaning, «I would NOT MIND having sexual relations with that woman.»

My McNuggets are trapped in the closet- It’s best if you just watch it before I say anything.

First off, she’s a jerk for not sharing.  Second, who is letting R. Kelly direct commercials?!? (I love that part where she’s cheating with the midget)

MyInspirAsian.com indeed- This one just gives me the giggles.  Turns out that McDonalds has set up MyInspirAsian.com and i-am-asian.com to help Asian Americans reach their dreams with fried foods.  Cool!  The flash game is totally worth waiting for.  You and the computer take turns eating McNuggets, but you always win by denying your significant other the last nugget!  HA HA! Those Asians must be Nuggnuts!  I would like to suggest some additional domains they might be interested in: i-am-peruvian.com, white-fried.com, and mcgriddles.com (the last one would just be a good domain for them to own).

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.