This is one from my backlog of reader-submitted content. Rachel P, who lives in Spain, sent me this Twitter ad from Magnum ice cream bars. She translates the headline as "how to raise a Spanish woman's self-esteem."
Yeah, ice cream, stiletto heels, and jewellery. That'll do 'er. Because feminism is so 20th Century.
It says, roughly, "How do Spanish women enjoy the pleasure of the best chocolate ice-cream?"
Magnum, a Unilever brand, is no stranger to controversial ads. Marketing primarily to women, they seem to have no problem insulting them with stuff like this. Tiresome.
As brands struggle to stay relevant in the social era, we are seeing an increasing move into ads that address deeply emotional issues.
Here's he latest:
In KFC UK's case, it's the touching story of a boy in foster care growing up in a supportive environment (which includes being welcomed with a big bucket of fried chicken).
It's pretty intense, and it brought a tear to this cynical aging adman's eye. But it also raises some questions.
Parent Dish has reviewed some of the negative feedback on social media, and summarizes:
Those who dislike the ad have argued that the trauma a child experiences in an abusive and/or neglectful birth family, compounded by the anxiety of being taken into care, cannot be mended by a bucket of chicken, however finger-lickin' good it might be. They believe that KFC are suggesting their chicken fixes these things.
It also points to a change.org petition that accuses the ad of "it glorifies the care system with little to no thought having been given to the real children entering the care system who are traumatized and have been torn away from their families and everything they know."
Those words seem eerily familiar to me, as several years ago I worked on a foster care campaign for the Children's Aid Societies of Eastern Ontario and we ended up attracting the attention of people who object to the way state intervention on child abuse is conducted.
Back to KFC: Yes, they are exploiting a deeply emotional story that is very personal to many people to sell fried chicken. Just as Coca-Cola and McDonald's have done for generations.
One thing KFC did, to its credit, is to consult with longtime children's advocate Barnardo's to ensure the subject was approached with sensitivity.
Barnardo's spokesperson Gerry Tissier stated, "Barnardo's saw the KFC ad before it was aired. We recognise that it cannot fully convey the difficulties which children and young people face when moving into a new family. However, we believe it shows that foster and adoptive parents can and do make a real positive difference to a child's life. If it persuades more people to come forwards for a child who needs a family, that will only be a good thing."
That's a good point. Charities are turning more and more to private sector brands for sponsorship. The charity gets program, production, and media money, as well as exposure. The brand gets to bond with its audiences over a warmed heart or a good cry.
I found an interesting quote about the the changing nature of emotional marketing, from Leisha Roche, senior director of marketing for grocery brands at Kraft Canada. She talked about how the media environment is awash in personal stories and heartfelt appeals: “You’re not competing with other brands anymore. You’re competing with people,” she said.
The KFC ad made me feel like I had something in my eye. Which is good. I just never want to forget that I'm watching a fast food ad.
Chipotle dropped the gauntlet with its promise of more local, sustainable sources. McDonald's has tried to become more transparent about its farm-to-fork supply chain (especially in Canada and Australia). Also in Canada, an independent A&W promises "hormone-free" beef and chicken raised without antibiotics.
Now American chain Carl's Jr. (whose gratuitously sexed-up ads frequently feature here) is doing something really smart: They're offering their customers a choice.
According to Burger Business, Carl’s Jr. is ready to introduce the first “all-natural, no hormones, no antibiotics, no steroids, grass-fed, free-range beef patty” from any major quick-service (fast food) chain in the United States.
But they're not replacing their ordinary beef burgers, just offering the more natural beef as an upgrade:
“We’ve seen a growing demand for ‘cleaner,’ more natural food, particularly among Millennials, and we’re proud to be the first major fast-food chain to offer an all-natural beef patty burger on our menu. Millennials include our target of ‘Young Hungry Guys’ and they are much more concerned about what goes into their bodies than previous generations,” Brad Haley, chief marketing officer for Carl’s Jr., said in a statement announcing the new burger. “Whether you’re into more natural foods or not, it’s simply a damn good burger.”
Great news for people concerned about where their meat comes from, and how the animal lived. Now it's up to the restaurant's regulars to put their money where their mouths are.
I doubt there's one popular internet photo meme that doesn't get turned into an ad campaign. In this case, it's "Food Fails" — pictures of really pathetic dishes shared on Tumblr, Instagram or elsewhere (Two of my favourites are Dimly Lit Meals for One, and the stomach-churning Cooking For Bae.)
This campaign by Artplan, Brazil, is sort-of funny. But personally, I find the execution lacks finesse. Why not just show the resulting dish, the Domino's logo, and a phone number to order?
I imagine the mass of grease known as the Double Down would stay with most people for a couple of hours, tops. That clearly wasn't enough for one young man, who wanted the relationship to be more permanent:
In the book Radical Marketing, Sam Hill and Glenn Rifkin talk about brands that are so loved, their evangelists literally brand themselves with tattoos of their favourite logos and products.
For the sake of a new ad, KFC apparently convinced a bearded individual — he escapes with his anonymity intact — to visit Tattoo Salvation in Louisville for a calf tattoo along the lines of that Norwegian guy's McDonald's receipt. Artist Adam Potts realizes that "with it being chicken, bacon, cheese, and the sauce," this particular design poses a problem: "There's a lot of browns and yellows in it." Still, he inks a bunless beauty, even adding in a very Ed Hardy-ized Colonel Sanders.
The video was featured on #HowDoYouKFC, a portion of the KFC corporate site set aside for "community."
Hey, tattoos are a very personal decision. But the "a lot of browns and yellows" comment should have been a red flag. The chicken "buns" look like a pile of poop.
I was wondering if this was an example of a more regrettable ink idea.
After all, how would I feel today if I had had a McDLT tattooed on my arm, years ago?
I guess there's nothing new under the sun. If this ad is from the '80s, which I'll assume from the font and layout, the Kraft beat KFC, Taco Bell, and even Epic Meal Time in the innovation of extreme junk food mashups.
This pizza with a Kraft Dinner (Mac & Cheese, for my American readers) crust is both intriguing and horrifying. Anyone up to test-kitchening it?
We've all seen the image. Pink goop that looks like strawberry ice cream gets extruded from a machine. It's claimed to be everything from ammonia-treated beef to Chicken McNuggets. It's this generation's version of "worms in the burgers."
The picture is real, and it shows highly-processed chicken that has been mechanically-separated from odds and ends of birds. But it's not how McNuggets are made. At least, not now.
The following video is one of the latest efforts by McDonald's Canada to be more transparent about its ingredients. And if you're used to dealing with meat, it's not even that gross:
Personally, I'm more concerned with how the chickens were housed, fed, slaughtered and processed before they hit the grinders — not to mention how well the meat is monitored for contamination and most of all how the workers are treated.
You can read a hilarious PR blog full of doublespeak here. (My favourite line: "From Alive Chicken to Not-Alive Chicken.") However, when I read that "80-90,000 chickens are processed daily" I am not exactly reassured.
But whatever your personal sensitivities are about the meat industry, it's at least fair to say the McNuggets didn't come from "pink slime."
If any of your Facebook friends are fans of Snickers Canada, you've probably seen this in your feed:
It's a Facebook App that invites you to look into a camera, and have your face turned into a "hungry" version of yourself:
Do we see anything problematic here? There's hunger on our streets. In the north. In the third world. In catastrophe-ravaged places like the Philippines.
When Snickers did the "You're not you when you're hungry" TV ads, they were funny because of the celebrities and the slice-of-life context.
This campaign, however, takes you down into a dank, prison-like environment where you are faced with a "machine" that will make you into a starving wretch:
And it didn't even work!
No, this is not consciousness-raising of world hunger. It is really insensitive candy marketing.
Despite this:
At Mars we take our responsibility for marketing our brands appropriately very seriously.
When I was a kid, this kind of stereotyping on native people was simply part of the landscape. We had "Indian" costumes, wallets, fake tomahawks and plastic soldiers. And the brands around us reflected this casual racism.
But the potato chip packaging above is not from the 1970s. Krispy Kernels snack foods, of Quebec, decided to reintroduce their old packaging as a "vintage edition," according to the CBC.
Interestingly, the old design was in use until 1990, when the Oka Crisis forced a more sensitive re-evaluation of Aboriginal issues in Canada.
While there is a certain value in recognizing how much things have changed in the past few decades, the ironic use of such a stereotype for marketing purposes seems at best misguided and at worst ignorantly racist.
It gets even worse: The company has an in-store contest that encourages people to take pictures of theor faces in a standee of a loinclothed "little Indian":
Upon launch, Valérie Jalbert, CEO of Yum Yum Chips and Krispy Kernels, and Renee-Maude Jalbert, marketing director of Yum Yum Chips , happily posed with the campaign for La Presse.
Irkar Beljaars, a Montreal-based Mohawk journalist, told the CBC:
“It's just like ‘look at that, I'm pretending to be an Indian. You're just perpetuating racial stereotypes. You're just continuing to mock us by doing things like this.”
It all began one August night when a customer, offended by the greasy taste of his french-fried potatoes, sent them back to the kitchen. Chef George Crum, who was of Native American descent (which inspired the Yum Yum logo), was equally offended by this return. Averse to criticism, Crum decided to seek revenge and furiously chopped up a new batch of potatoes. Slicing them as thin as paper, he threw them in a boiling hot oil-filled fryer and removed them once crisp and golden. He then seasoned them heavily and served his dish to the picky patron.
The company said the caricature on the package is a return to the company's roots, and is not meant to be mocking.
There it is, in all its oddly-centred, fake-ad-looking headline glory.
I'll quote the body copy in full:
For over 127 years, people have been coming together over Coca-Cola products to refresh, to celebrate, and to enjoy a moment with something they love. One reason why is that people have always been able to trust the quality of our products and everything that goes into them.
That’s something that will never change.
But changing with the times and people’s tastes is something we’ve always done. Today, that means offering more great-tasting, low- and no-calorie choices. And while nearly everyone can agree that providing choices to help people manage the calories they take in is a good thing, we understand that some people have questions about the use of low- and no-calorie sweeteners.
Our use of high-quality, low- and no-calorie sweeteners, including aspartame, allows us to give people great-tasting options they can feel good about. Time and again, these low- and no-calorie sweeteners have shown to be safe, high-quality alternatives to sugar. In fact, the safety of aspartame is supported by more than 200 studies over the last 40 years.*
Today, we’re proud to offer a wide range of Coca-Cola products that fit different people’s life- styles. Because we believe that when people come together with more choices that are right for them, good things happen.
For more information, including third-party studies on the benefits and safety of low- and no-calorie sweeteners, go to beverageinstitute.org
*International Food Information Council Foundation. 2011. Everything You Need to Know About Aspartame. Magnuson, B.A., et al. 2007. Aspartame: A safety evaluation based on current use levels, regulations, and toxicological and epidemiological studies. Crit Rev Toxicol. 37: 629_727. Aspartame is safe for use by nearly all populations. The only exception is people born with phenylketonuria (PKU) who cannot metabolize phenylalanine. But, this does not mean aspartame is unsafe for other consumers.
Ad Age says the campaign will run in USA Today in Atlanta, the Atlanta Journal Constitution and the Chicago Tribune. Then again, media buys are just proof it's a real ad. Many more people will see it online.
Ad Age also quotes a Coke news release:
"We believe there is a real opportunity to bring people together to educate them about low- and no- calorie sweeteners. Low- and no-calorie sweeteners offer a great way for people to manage their calories while still enjoying the sweet taste that they love. We understand, though, that some people have questions about these ingredients, especially aspartame. We felt it was important for us to answer these questions and reinforce that these are ingredients people can feel good about."
I'll try not to write anything I could get sued for. I'll just say that, as a parent, I do not believe "diet" soft drinks are a healthy choice for me or for my son, and we will not have them in our house. We promote drinking water as the #1 thirst quencher for him, followed by milk and limited fruit juice. We even allow the occasional sweetened "pop" in the house, but prefer real sugar over corn syrup. That's just us.
Intuitively, people choose non-caloric artificial sweeteners over sugar to lose or maintain weight. Sugar provides a large amount of rapidly absorbable carbohydrates, leading to excessive energy intake, weight gain, and metabolic syndrome. Sugar and other caloric sweeteners such as high fructose corn syrup have been cast as the main culprits of the obesity epidemic. Whether due to a successful marketing effort on the part of the diet beverage industry or not, the weight conscious public often consider artificial sweeteners “health food”. But do artificial sweeteners actually help reduce weight?
Surprisingly, epidemiologic data suggest the contrary. Several large scale prospective cohort studies found positive correlation between artificial sweetener use and weight gain.
They didn't claim is was good for you. They just said it was "safe" and that you can "feel good about it". If you want a better look at their arguments and sources, there's a handy infographic at their advocacy site.
As a parting thought, however, I wonder if drawing attention to the issue is going to backfire.
The dessert you grew up with is now made with better ingredients.
We’ve put a lot of heart into our new recipes to ensure we deliver the icing you love on an even better cake. It’s all part of our journey to make our yummy desserts using the same ingredients you’d find in your own kitchen, like flour, eggs, baking powder and vanilla.
Once again: What the hell was in it before?!?
But Julia, my wife, had no issue whatsoever with this approach. "I'm glad to hear it!" she quipped.
When asked whether she was alarmed by having it pointed out that the countless freezer cakes we had eaten in years past were basically frozen chemicals, her response was "It was the '70s. We didn't care!"
This teaser video about the chicken content of McNuggets addresses a nagging perception about the ingredients. I recall reading the nutritional information on McNuggets back in the '80s, and realizing that it was basically congealed chicken soup (including mechanically separated meat and chicken stock). However, Huffington Post was forced to post a correction to a story about the popular fast food back in 2010, with the correction that McDonald's USA has been using only "white meat" since 2003.
What this newest volley in the McDonald's PR campaign is battling, is this popular meme image of questionable origin:
Purportedly a picture of mechanically-separated chicken slurry fated for your 6-piece McNugget meal, it has also erroneously been labelled as the "pink slime" cow-part filler that goes into commercial ground beef.
If you actually go to the McDonald's Canada site, here is their answer to the McNugget question:
They refer the users to third-party "Mom Bloggers" who have been taken on a junket to a Cargill chicken processing plant to observe and report on the process. (My favourite part of this post is the squeamish subtitle "From Alive Chicken to Not-Alive Chicken".)
Here is their description of the making of McNuggets:
The white breast meat, along with chicken stock and a natural proportion of skin from the breast is placed into a huge blender. I didn’t realize that there is skin in the nugget mixture but this helps to hold the shape. The meat is then mixed and chilled using CO2. McNuggets are formed, not ground. There are 4 shapes that are pressed out with a rolling cookie cutter: boot, bow-tie, ball and bell. The reason they are all standard in shape and size is to ensure consistency in all McDonald’s restaurants. This guarantees both food safety (standard cooking times in restaurants) and portion control.
Once the fun shapes pop out, they are coated in batter, dusted with flour and then given a final coat of tempura batter. Who knew? From here they are par-fried and placed directly into the freezer. A thin mist of water is sprayed onto them, as tempura is susceptible to dehydration. They are then inspected and packaged to be sent off to the restaurants.
"Blender"?
Here are the actual McNuggets ingredients, according the the corporate site:
While the strategist in me can admire the theory and complexity of this grand social media strategy for McDonald's Canada, I think it really fails on true transparency.
Can dimethylpolysiloxane and TBHQ (tert-Butylhydroquinone) be considered "seasonings"?
Dimethylpolysiloxane is a type of silicone, "the most widely used silicon-based organic polymer, and is particularly known for its unusual rheological (or flow) properties. PDMS is optically clear, and, in general, inert, non-toxic, and non-flammable. It is also called dimethicone and is one of several types of silicone oil (polymerized siloxane). Its applications range from contact lenses and medical devices to elastomers; it is also present in shampoos (as dimethicone makes hair shiny and slippery), food (antifoaming agent), caulking, lubricating oils, and heat-resistant tiles." (Wikipedia)
TBHQ, added here as a cooking oil preservative, is "used industrially as a stabilizer to inhibit autopolymerization of organic peroxides. It is also used as a corrosion inhibitor in biodiesel. In perfumery, it is used as a fixative to lower the evaporation rate and improve stability. It is also added to varnishes, lacquers, resins, and oil field additives." (Wikipedia) It is, however, considered safe for human consumption in limited quantities.
I don't want to come off as a food alarmist. Industrial chemicals are just like any other substances we consume, even natural ones. They can have positive, negative, or negligible effects on our bodies. In short, I didn't come here to say "OMG, McNuggets use the same chemical as breast implants!!!"
Rather, I'm here to say that McDonald's is, ironically, building a lot of very obvious spin into a campaign that is supposed to be about giving honest answers to consumer questions. As unfair as the pink slime, chicken head and tumour rumours are to McDonald's current products, they could have done so by telling their whole story up front, rather than making people dig for the whole truth.
Cheeseburgers and pizza are my two favourite foods in the world. But not together. That would be an abomination.
Boston Pizza disagrees:
It's an amusing campaign, by Taxi Canada. But I can't help but be a little uneasy when I think of all the people in the world who still can't indulge in this kind of Epic Meal Time kind of thing. I guess that's the nature of our society, though. We keep looking for the most decadent food experience possible, just because we can.
But should we? That's up to you. And your digestive system, which might not be impressed if you throw one of these at it:
You've got to hand it to Carl's Jr./Hardee's — they just won't give up using sex to sell their burgers, no matter what gets in their way.
In New Zealand, according to the National Business Review, the barrier was a broadcast TV ban on their "BBQ's Best Pair" ad by the Commercial Approvals Bureau for using "sexual appeal in an exploitative and degrading manner" and "using sex to sell an unrelated product". (Makes one wonder how many consumer ads from the Americas, Australia, or Asia get approved there.)
Rather than give up the brand's international creative, national owner Restaurant Brands just hired an American actor to supply a play-by-play description of the banned video. It ends up being, thanks to the imagination, even dirtier:
Sticking it to advertising regulators probably scored the brand lots of points with their target market, who they describe as "young hungry guys.”
The radio version was done by NZ's Special Group. Creative Director Tony Bradbourne boasts, “it’s just great humour which is on tone and on brand for our audience.”
I guess we'll see what fallout — if any — happens next over this public baiting of the regulator (and New Zealand women). But at least they were creative about it.
According to Huffington Post, the above is part of New York City's new campaign to make citizens more aware of hidden sodium in their diets. It's a pretty modest little message. Especially considering what they were doing three years ago:
Those ads drew the ire of the Center for Consumer Freedom (the lobby group for the fast food, meat, alcohol and tobacco industries). Stating that "the 1,300 milligrams of salt in a can of chicken and rice soup is actually less than a teaspoon," they produced this parody ad:
This is the problem with exaggerating the harm in a public health campaign. If you overstate your case, detractors can have a field day undermining your credibility.
That's why I'm happy to see a reasonable approach to salt awareness. The only problem is that the ad, as pictured up top, has no conceptual or visual appeal. It's as if, after the PRmageddon following their recent teen pregnancy campaign, the city's communication heads have dialed it back a little too much.
We all know that food advertising uses all kinds of fakery to make the product look as appealing and we're supposed to imagine it. But Heidi Klum's fake bite and chew in the new Hardee's/Carl's Jr. ad is a little unsettling.
Was she even in the same room as the burger? Did she use a stunt mouth? The Jim Beam Bourbon Thickburger, by the way, packs 870 calories and 45 grams of fat.
I don't think I've seen a bite that weird since V:
The sex-themed burger ad is the latest in a series, although this one is less cheesecake and more goofy parody. (Of The Graduate, in case you are culturally impoverished.)
Some of you might be old enough to remember when Kentucky Fried Chicken was spelled out in full, and its food was positioned as an alternative to home cooking that would give women a break from their cooking duties at home.
Even when more and more women went to work, the ads continued to assume that it was a mother's duty to take care of dinner:
Personally, I thought those days were over. But apparently not in the chain's UK and Ireland operations:
Mother's Day, or Mothering Sunday, is now a day to honor mothers and other mother figures, such as grandmothers, stepmothers and mother-in-laws. Many people make a special effort to visit their mother. They take cards and gifts to her and may treat her to brunch, lunch or high tea in a cafe, restaurant or hotel. People who cannot visit their mother usually send gifts or cards to her.
An important part of Mothering Sunday is giving cards and gifts. Common Mother's Day gifts are cakes, flowers, chocolates, jewelry, and luxurious clothing. Some people do not give a physical gift, but choose to treat their mother or grandmother to a special meal, beauty treatment or fun outing.
