Was McDonald's Involved?

This video is blowing up on YouTube right now, in which an actress does a great job lampooning the way in which black women have been portrayed by fast food chains, particularly McDonald's. While I want to believe this is just one woman creating a nice resume piece that will likely land her more roles, something makes me cautious that it was that innocent. That something is the Big Mac featured in the final third of the four minute and twenty second video. It's perfect. It looks styled. And we've all seen the "what they advertise, what you get" photographs. I did one years ago for Wendy's Baconator. Besides the perfection of her meal, she makes an excellent pitch for a Big Mac and vanilla shake. Watching her eat it, you want your own.

And 4:20 seems a little too perfect as well, now that I think about it.

  

Grocery List

On the fridge we keep a whiteboard to write down whatever needs restocking or the necessary ingredients for the evening's dinner. Family members know to put down their wants/needs as they run out of stuff. Then I take a picture of it and that's my list at the store. Much easier than typing a list on the phone. So yesterday I put these items on the list and now we are back from Sonic and everyone feels like hell.

Dance With The One That Brung You

It's all over the news today; all the world all freaked out that Taco Bell's meat doesn't really qualify as meat, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

This is not news. Nobody eats at Taco Bell imagining that the food is good for them. It's late night stoner food. It's fill-up-for-cheap-damn-the-intestinal-consequences food.

Hopefully, there won't be some stupid circling of the wagons at Taco Bell wherein some stupid flack comes out and issues a stupid, formal response to the stupid lawsuit brought by the stupid Alabama stupid law firm. And hopefully, they won't start a Twitter or Facebook "Brand Reputation Management" counter-assault. So far, they're doing exactly what they should be doing: ignoring it. It's business as usual on the Taco Bell Twitter feed, including retweeting @ShutTheFxckUpHo 's tweet, "I love Taco Bell with all my heart!"

Now if the shit-meat really starts to hit the fan and Taco Bell starts noticing people avoiding their stores, I urge them now to avoid the PR pimps and whores who will come running to offer their services. I urge them to resist the urge to apologize and to avoid the promises to make things better, "going forward."

Embrace who you are. Celebrate it. Flaunt it. Fuck 'em all. You're Taco Bell, damnit. You've got nothing to apologize for.

UPDATE: Too bad, Taco Bell looks like it's going the legal route. Spineless.

Chicken Wings Sold with Football Hands

Despite the fact that they sponsor competitive eating events, my least favorite "sport," I have to hand it (zing!) to Krystal for this ad.

They're a small player in the world of fast food, (they have 420 locations and are popular with college kids. COINCIDENCE?) but this relatively inexpensive ad is innovative. Quirky and cheap and sure, it gets old after a couple viewings, but I hear there are others in the campaign. Can't seem to locate any agency info on who did this. Would like to know.

UPDATE: Matt says in the comments that the agency for Krystal is The Johnson Group out of Chattanooga, TN, a very fine city I have visited a couple of times. And The Johnson Group is my kind of agency, not just pretending to know about social media, but totally up to speed. At left is a photo of their building from their website, followed by the street view from Google. Note the street view does not have the aging, weather-worn identifier at the top of the building. Photoshop or new paint? 


And yes, they have my resume now.

I'm Thinking...No Thought Went Into This

This guy has to be either

1) The agency owner, or
2) The founder of Qdoba

but whoever he is, peering from behind his Risky Business sunglasses and looking up at his thought bubble, he was a low-budget model in a hastily assembled campaign that wasted money on expensive outdoor boards from Clear Channel. Come to think of it, he could even be an in-house creative at Clear Channel, phoning in yet another dumb idea.

No "Right at next light." No prince point. No deals offered. Just a shoulderless middle-aged man in a buttoned-up polo shirt ripping off the "I'm thinking Arby's" campaign. Lame. 

Taco Bell Brainstorm

Saw a spot for Taco Bell recently. Everyone in the room agreed that the commercial was very anti-appetizing. Maybe you just need to be stoned and hungry to appreciate Taco Bell spots. Whatever they're doing, they're doing it wrong. All of the Yum! brands seem to just plain suck. Maybe they are just the eternal second-place also-rans. Pizza Hut, KFC, Long John Silver's, Taco Bell. Maybe it's the association with perennial second-place also-ran Pepsi, I don't know. But here's how they come up with their commercials, I'm pretty sure.



D'oh! They left out "slimy cheese in slow motion."

The Bluegrass State Grilled Chicken Treated Humanely

If only we could see the future. Poor KFC.

Clickin' for Finger Lickin'

Where is This Place They Call Baja?

It's not too smart to make apologies for your product right off the bat. Like the regional grocery chain that says, "We're getting better all the time!" You might as well say, "We don't suck as much as we used to!"

Here comes Long John Silver's, acting as though fish tacos are a strange, new thing, even going so far as to say "Sounds Weird!" in a tag for the taco.



What sounds weird is your approach, Long John Silver's. Fish tacos have been staples in coastal towns for decades, but I'll cut you some slack and allow that maybe you thought your audience in middle America would say, "Gawl-Dang! Fish in a taco? What the hell?" but that also presumes that your audience in middle America has never turned on a TV, read a magazine or jumped online. I can find fish tacos in Omaha right now with a simple search, so maybe they're not as "weird" as you presume in your stupid campaign. They even titled the spot, "Dare," and "dared" a dumb city-boy to try this daring thing called a fish taco. "Sounds Weird!" Gahhhh! STOP IT!

Just put them on the menu and stop apologizing. Present yourself as the place to get the tastiest fucking fish tacos this side of Rosarito Beach. Do a little surf culture commercial with hot chicks in bikinis eating fish tacos with the sauce dripping out. Your new tag: "Tacos Way Better" or some such slam at Taco Bell.

Your Customers Wear Snuggies

Jack in the Box mocks the McDonald's crowd in this depiction of a couple of seniors awaiting the Death Panel as they describe their beloved Filet-o-Fish as "very dependable" and "soft." Nice job on the part of JIB to portray the fast-food giant as staid and boring. You're never going to beat McD's in sales, so why not just take a baseball bat to their creaky old knees and hit them where they're vulnerable?



McDonald's is just as guilty of this type of attack ad. The current radio campaign for their iced coffee directly mocks the Starbucks crowd as a bunch of trendy faux-Bohemians in need of an intervention to wake them from their cult-like devotion.

"Fried" is a Four Letter Word

Cringe with me, won't you, by visiting KFC.com. Close your eyes in shame and hang your head as you watch the white lady dance with drumsticks.

The "F" in KFC stands for "fried," as you might guess from the image below.



Now KFC wants you to "unthink" what you know about KFC.

Bad start.

Years ago, Kentucky Fried Chicken decided they needed to shed the whole "fried" image and start calling themselves "KFC." I remember an old Dennis Miller bit from that time in which he said, "It's chicken. Let's not try to hip it up too much, OK?"

And yet here they are, still using the word "fried" prominently on their current website, signs and advertising. Why not just call yourselves "Kentucky Heart Attack Chicken" or "Kentucky Clogged Arteries Chicken?"

Now they want us to think of them as "grilled," even though they still call themselves "fried."

Confused much, KFC?

You need to decide what the hell you want to be and be it. And don't ask me to "unthink" when you're clearly the ones who need to start thinking.

How about dropping the adjective altogether and just be "Kentucky Chicken?" Or how about just "The Colonel's?" A massive, chain-wide rebranding will be expensive and difficult, but it beats this schizo image you're presenting.

Sure, "fried" is a dirty word nowadays, and KFC understandably needs to move away from it. But pull the plug already. Anytime you tell your customers to "stop thinking about us this way!" you are digging a hole. And as you ask them to stop thinking of you that way while still calling yourself that, you're just being stupid. I'm sure the agency knows this, but I'm also sure they're up against a bureaucratic corporation that can't quite "unthink" their old image.

Fast Food Fighting Back

I'm thinking maybe this should run in a parenting magazine or perhaps one for expectant mothers.

get the big, juicy, jumbo size

Jack in the Box - Reachin' the Stoner Demo

Jack in the Box, the box you can put yer weed in...man.

Another in their ongoing attempt to reach the late-night, really hungry for some tacos, man, crowd.



I suppose it's an audience worth targeting: I'm sure there are plenty of kids in college with little money to spend on food once they've spent their money on pot.

To Some, No Sauce is a Serious Crime

Move over, Jared - Subway has a new real-life devotee to take your place. Meet Reginald Peterson, who is crazy for Subway.

If I were Subway, I'd be turning this true story out of Jacksonville into a commercial right away.

Reginald Peterson needs to learn that 911 is not the appropriate place to complain that Subway left the sauce off a spicy Italian sandwich.

Authorities said the 42-year-old man dialed 911 twice last week so he could have his sub made correctly. The second call was to complain that officers weren't arriving fast enough.

Subway workers told police Peterson became belligerent and yelled when they were fixing his order. They locked him out of the store after he left to call police.When officers arrived, they tried to calm Peterson and explain the proper use of 911. Those efforts failed, and he was arrested on a charge of making false 911 calls.

As Nourishing as it is Tasty!

Yes, it's a meat-salad-vegetable combination! It's a well-balanced meal!

Lengthy copy and giant picture in this 1966 ad for the then-still-fledgling Burger King. Click image for bigger version and see if your locale even had a Burger King in 1966. Mine didn't, as it was pre-Disney days here and who wanted to risk a franchise in Orlando? I'm loving the Raygun Gothic architecture of the restaurant at the bottom of the ad.

And I'll be damned if this ad doesn't still work, 42 years after its creation. That giant burger looks really good to me right now. Only problem is that since 1966, we've learned that there is no such thing as a nourishing meal from Burger King.

Via.

McDonald's Brings Peace to Middle East

Every year, 23% of Filet-O-Fish sandwich sales at McDonald's are purchased during Lent, when many Catholics abstain from meat.

Filet-O-Fish is also a hot seller among Jews and Muslims, according to the link above.

Thanks to Chris Houchens of Shotgun Marketing Blog for the fish story.

That's Right.™

From your youngest days, you recognized that the pictures on TV or on the menu exaggerated the awesomeness of the food. Here's the Baconator™, as advertised by Wendy's - and the Baconator™, as delivered by Wendy's.

Food stylists are wizards. Here's a good one I found simply searching that term. They make us buy things. They sell what isn't real.

For the record, the Baconator™ is indeed a tasty mountain of sodium and fat. I split it with four other people.

Here's the very good spot that introduced it to us.

UPDATE: HighJive points out in the comments that the author of West Virginia Surf Report has made a modest hobby of doing what I've done here. The pictures there are pretty disgusting - and funny.

Screamin' Funny

I hated the tree-kicking Wendy's ad, but this one works for me. On one forum I saw this remark: "I mean, how is this supossed to get me to go to Wendy's? It's like some weird horror movie directed by Fellini." To which someone else replied, "Who cares about the commercial? It has 6 strips of bacon...it sells itself." Anyway, clueless wonder, it's not a horror film. Men's faces are crudely affixed to the bodies of girls going insane in some sort of Beatlemania over the Baconator. And I think they even used real footage from the era.



I even love the "That's Right" stinger that closes the ad. It's got the WTF/Humor factor + more. It's got 6 strips of bacon. And Saatchi figured it out: a burger of this grotesque magnitude and artery clogging capabilities will only sell to men who like to laugh in the face of death. Hence the pudgy, goofy Vince Vaughn looking guy at the end.

The Colonel Gets Another Makeover

(LOUISVILLE, KY) Kentucky Fried Chicken is test-marketing yet another image change in select cities across the US. With a rearrangement of their letters to FKC and a drastic update of the beloved icon Colonel Sanders, the company says it’s all about attracting the crowd most known for frequenting fast food franchises.

“Appealing to busy families on the go might work in small town and rural America, but we’ve seen a trend in the chain's more urban markets,” said Jane Marquette, a partner in the advertising agency BSF+U. “When we visited KFC outlets across America, there was an overwhelming trend we could not ignore; many of the restaurant’s clientele were stoners, skaters, emo kids and blue collar guys on their lunch breaks.”

In San Diego, the image change has been viewed very positively; with local sports radio stations urging listeners to frequent the stores.

“F KC! That’s what it’s all about, man!” said Tug McBohner, host of the drive time sports show Chargers or Death. “We HATE Kansas City here. F them is right!”

Marquette insists the name change has nothing to do with the city of Kansas City and says it’s more about projecting an attitude that appeals to the modern fast food diner.

“The name means Fried Kentucky Chicken, obviously, but it can be viewed in any way a patron wishes. That’s part of the edginess of the campaign,” said Marquette. “We are fully aware of what F means, and our targeted demo understands the wink and the nod we’re giving them. We’re making Kentucky Fried Chicken cool.”

As for the makeover of the Colonel, Marquette says that was a tough sell for KFC brass.

“He’d only recently received a pretty dramatic makeover, so their squeamishness at letting us alter him even further was understandable. But when we showed them a random sampling of photographs of their own employees, who look very much like they might be the new Colonel’s partying buddies, they relented. He's a little menacing, perhaps even scary, but our studies are showing that the kids look up to him much more than they did the kindly old grandpa in the apron.”

Marquette predicts that other fast food chains will mimic KFC’s efforts.

“They’re already after the same group with their Do Wendy’s and Fourth Meal and I’m Thinkin’ Arby’s campaigns. It’s all about the hipster kids with the munchies and some money.”

Disclaimer: Please, do we really need a disclaimer here?

What Might've Been - Rejected by Wendy's

In light of the recent switch of the Wendy's account to Saatchi & Saatchi, one of the losing agencies bidding for the creative side of the fast-food giant's business has revealed to Where's My Jetpack? one of the ideas presented in their pitch.












A self-described "envelope-pushing agent of change," Jill Summersby-Heath-McBride-Jackson of Pure Bull Worldwide said:

It was time for Wendy to grow up. That poofy shouldered shirt, the freckles, the pigtails. Ugh! And "Quality is Our Recipe?" How staid and cliched! Also, the whole "old fashioned" thing has run its course, no offense to the memory of the late great Dave Thomas. So we lost that old typeface on the Wendy's name and went with the "punkassbitch" font, also losing the silly wrought-iron swirly thing. We got rid of "old-fashioned" and just decided to tell it like it is. I mean, if the Colonel can get a facelift, why can't Wendy let her hair down? The Wendy's people weren't really into what we presented. Their loss. It tested well with a lot of diverse groups. Frankly, I think the little girl is creepy."