McDonald’s ad featuring its CEO backfires spectacularly as rivals waste no time roasting it
Not every advertisement can hit the mark, and that is what McDonald’s recently found out. As a promotion for its new release in America, the Big Arch, Company CEO Chris Kempczinski did a taste test and released the video on his official Instagram handle. However, the reactions were not what either he or the company expected, and things got so bad that even competitors began roasting the video.
This promotional tactic failed spectacularly because Kempczinski hyped up the burger and then took the smallest possible bite out of it. “I love this product. It is so good,” he said, as he touted the sesame seed-laden bun and a special sauce that the company had made for this burger. To be fair to the CEO, it was quite a big burger, but the bite he took out of it was still very small.
Kempczinski also said that it was going to be his lunch. “Oh, there’s so much going on with this,” he quipped. “I don’t even know how to attack it, it’s got so much to it!” He then took his tiny bite of the burger before making a rather frivolous claim. “Big bite for a Big Arch,” he exclaimed. Users may think that the burger looked appetizing, but everyone was confused by the small bite.
Even McDonald’s competitors joined in on the fun, with Burger King UK commenting, “We couldn’t finish it either,” while Subway Singapore added, “We have something fresher you can bite into.” Similarly, a comment by Wendy's official handle read, “Lots to unpack here,” while Wingstop Canada's Instagram handle asked, “Is the big bite in the room with us?” All in all, the competitors had a field day making fun of a rather ridiculous promotional video.
This is not the first time McDonald’s has been in soup over an ad. During the holiday season last year, the brand put out an ad that was completely generated using artificial intelligence. The ad was meant to capture the joy and cheer of Christmas, but instead, it angered fans, who criticized the company for using AI rather than paying actors for a proper holiday advertisement.
The company released a 45-second ad that was made for its Netherlands division by the ad agency TBWA\Neboko. Some viewers felt that the video did not even look good, and most blamed grotesque characters, horrible color grading, and hackneyed AI approximations of basic physics. People were also left overwhelmed by the extremely quick scene changes that were too much to process.
“For seven weeks, we hardly slept, with up to 10 of our in-house AI and post specialists at The Gardening Club [our in-house AI engine] working in lockstep with the directors,” the CEO of Sweetshop, the agency that made the ad, wrote, before adding, “I don’t see this spot as a novelty or a cute seasonal experiment. To me, it’s evidence of something much bigger: that when craft and technology meet with intention, they can create work that feels genuinely cinematic. So no – AI didn’t make this film. We did.”
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