Where is your next meal coming from?

There are two campaigns circulating currently that have got me thinking about food trends and how they play out in advertising.

Those of you who know me know that I can be a bit of a food snob. With a few comfort food exceptions, I tend to buy stuff that is locally raised and processed, or from a trusted source, and that never touched a factory farm.

I guess I'm not alone. A couple of generations ago, the mechanization of the food industry was seen as a way to ensure quality, purity and cleanliness. In the decades after The Jungle was written, the industrial revolution — then the space age — completely changed people's relationship with food. It was processed, preserved and packaged by SCIENCE. And it was convenient, too!

But times have changed. Instead of The Jungle, we are reading Fast Food Nation. And factory food has gone (in the public mind) from ensuring cleanliness to efficiently spreading pathogens.

So, how should big food brands respond? In the case of fast food, it's to try to convince customers that their ingredients really are "real food", and that the chain of custody can be trusted.

These ones are from McDonalds in UAE (via Ads of the World):

 

I don't like them either. They seem desperate, and they're not very appealing.

This one, on the other hand, for Domino's Pizza, shows how CP+B keeps earning its reputation as a creative powerhouse:



AdFreak adds that the whole thing is real: the agency actually recruited focus group members, drove them to the room in cars with covered windows, and recorded authentic reactions.

Same strategy, very different approaches. But does either convince you that fast food is wholesome?