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Thursday 3 February 2005
Intentional Accidents in Advertising
Andrew Teman is convinced that McDonalds have made a complete f*ck up (pun intended) in their latest US based marketing campaign.
He thinks that McDonalds have gone that one step too far to try to use some hip, cool urban slang with the use of the phrase I'd hit it. He rightly expects that the target audience will be rolling in the aisles at the thought of some spotty teenager depositing his personal "mac sauce" on their burgers.
I'd say that McDonalds' advertising gurus know exactly what they're doing. Advertising is the art of getting people thinking and talking about your product and that's exactly what this advert does. By intentionally making it look like they've made an unintentionally hilarious mistake they will generate far more interest in the advert than they could otherwise. Best of it is, those who don't know the slang don't know its rude so there's very little chance of a complaint.
Several years ago the Keep Britain Tidy issued car stickers with the slogan "Have You Dropped One?" in bold type. These proved extremely popular with clubbers as "drop one" translates as "take an ecstasy tablet" combined with the fact that popular club music label Tidy Trax pilfered the Keep Britain Tidy logo. The result, the campaign was far more successful than it would otherwise have been with clubbers running up and down the country with these stickers in the window. Is this an accident of a very clever piece of marketing?
Equally, would McDonalds really care that 13 to 30 year olds are laughing at the "unintentional" humour in the advert? I doubt it very much as those same people are probably showing the adverts to all there friends increasing its reach by factors of 10.
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