Greasing the wheels…

With words like ‘happy’ and ‘loving it’ already part of the McDonalds Corporation’s proprietorship, its no wonder that they’re trying to get their oily hands on words like ‘healthy’ and ‘wholesome’. I am appalled and baffled by a new McDonalds marketing campaign that portrays the fast food giant as some kind of health spa. One giant billboard sports a cyclist riding a bicycle with orange slices for wheels and urges one to ‘Make fruits a daily target’. Fruit? At McDonalds? I think one of the McFlurrys has fruit in it. No wait, those are Astros. Another ad features an athlete running through an apparent jungle of vegetables hinting at the Golden Arch’s selection of ‘Veggies’. Now while McD’s does offer an enormous range of 3 salads, one must not forget the perfunctory lettuce, gherkin and onion fragments that grace their more popular ‘sandwiches’. Why I am calling hamburgers ‘sandwiches’? Because that’s what McDonalds is now calling them. A string of adverts renounces the German relic ‘hamburger’ name, unveiling the elegant, proteinacious sandwich as the perfect complement to an active lifestyle. Funny how a Quarter Pounder still looks like a squashed, cheesy, artery clogging burger. But then again, appearances can be deceiving. Ads on their website have a gymnast endorsing milk and a swimmer encouraging you to drink 8 glasses of water per day. Both of these liquids are apparently found in above trace quantities in several of their product lines.

The campaign’s slogan reads: ‘Its what I eat and what I do’, which I have taken to mean ‘I know its bad for me, but I’ll eat it anyway’. Unfortunately ‘Just Eat It!’ was already taken.