How The Meaty Have Fallen

Years ago, I wrote a post about how many ads use “It’s Your Thing” by the Isley Brothers. The point was that it’s really over-used, and worse, lazily used — by advertisers looking for a cheap expression of … I don’t know, individuality, or something? I was pointing out that it just keeps getting warmed-over by the ad industry, despite it already being associated with the last second-rate brand that used it, and also, in complete obliviousness to how cliched it is. 

(After the recent passing of Rudolph Isley, I should point out that I have nothing against the song itself, but it’s become generic ad music, about as fresh as 70s Muzak.)

So I was absolutely shocked when I saw McDonald’s latest ad campaign built around that most over-used song. It might not be a surprise for younger people: Today, McDonald’s is just another established brand casting about for something that will appeal to Gen Z and Gen Alpha. (Seriously, that’s what they’re calling it.) 

But when I was younger, Mickey-D’s were legendary for their marketing prowess. Among anyone with the self-awareness to realize that marketing was happening, they were the epitome of corporate Svengalis making the public dance to their choice of tune. Children loved them. Teens loved them even though children loved them. Parents hated them but let their children drag them there anyway.

To be honest, I always thought the legend of their gastronomic propaganda was a little exaggerated. After all, if they could control the general public’s tastes, wouldn’t they choose something easier to make than burgers? I mean, they are a fairly complex food; they do have all the food groups one way or another. Wouldn’t it be more profitable to command everyone to desire raw soy beans or something?

But even if they were never a burger collective controlling the American palate, they were the pinnacle of twentieth-century marketing. Yes, they had missteps like the Arch Deluxe or their foray into Pizza. But on the other hand, they built an empire with a clown and a big purple lump, convinced kids to have their birthdays there, got us to drink some kind of orange syrup at public events, made the McRib into a major event, and made a legend out of a burger that’s half-bread and has an unclassifiable-sauce.

So it was a shock to see them build an ad campaign around this cliched song that a regional chain of muffler shops would be embarrassed to use. On the one hand, it’s kind of refreshing; instead of marketing going after the youths, here they’re going after, I don’t know, the Boomers, I guess? But it’s also a bit sad. It’s like a TV show that came back for one season too many, an aging rock star dabbling in smooth jazz, or an athlete that doesn’t know when to quit. Wow, I saw communism fall, and somehow the fall of McDonald’s marketing is more shocking.

The McFlurry Is A Lie

I had a weird experience recently when I saw an ad on Facebook looking for McDonald's employees. That's odd to begin with: I'm a bit old for their employee demographic, and in general, Facebook is not a place to go looking for that demographic. But what was really surreal was that this ad came with a game. Click on the link, and you could play a game. What kind of game, you ask? Why, a game of working at McDonald's. It's a drive in Canada to hire 25,000 new employees with a game called Crush the Rush Crew.

In the game, you're looking down at a McDonald's kitchen, as new orders come in at the drive through. You then click/tap on the appropriate employees to have them make an item. And try to keep up. It was a bit dull, since you can only work on the next item in the order queue; you can't strategize by having the burger maker work on a Big Mac for the next order, while the drink maker works on the coffee for the next car in line instead of just twiddling thumbs.

But let's back up here. Depending on your experience with video games, this might seem like a bizarre game idea. But there's actually quite a history with these time management games. If you're my age, you may remember seeing Tapper in the 80's, and not believing that was a real game next to all its contemporaries. So let me shock you again: that genre has kept right on going, and there are now lots of people playing games based on seemingly stressful situations. So the idea of a McDonald's drive through management game is actually the least unexpected part of this scenario. But I would have thought McDonald's wouldn't like the idea of representing their work as a game.

So now I'm trying to wrap my head around this: we've created a genre of game about doing minimum-wage manual labor, and now a company is using one of those games to convince people to do those minimum-wage manual labor jobs. I don't know which surprises me more, that McDonald's embraced the concept to sell people on working for them, or that potential employees haven't just laughed at the concept. I looked at the comments under the Facebook ad expecting lots of vitriol, but there wasn't much. Some people complained about the difficulty of the game, and a few made jokes about how they already played the game in real life. But there was no how-dare-you-make-a-game-of-overworking-your-underpaid-employees. I didn't even see any comments about how unrealistic it was that the game's ice cream machine worked.

It all seems like something from a semi-humorous sci-fi dystopia like Ready Player One or Snow Crash. Though speaking of sci-fi, the idea of gamifying more serious things is not new. Perhaps McDonald's could specifically recruit those who do well in the game, like in The Last Starfighter. Of course, the next level would be if the game were the job; when you play it, your instructions are actually being sent out to some random McDonald’s somewhere in the world, like some kind of banal version of Ender's Game. Actually, that could be good: you do your part running a McDonald’s, and if you do a good enough job, you get a discount on your next purchase. Don’t have enough for a Big Mac Meal? Just take a few minutes to run up a new high score on the Decatur, Georgia drive-through.

Once again, it’s part of our weird future, where work is play, and play is work. I just wish they could find a way to make supermarket self-serve checkouts into a game.

I'll Gladly Text You Tuesday For A Cheeseburger Today

There's been a furor about the emojis representing cheeseburgers. Here are the Apple and Google versions, courtesy of Emojipedia

The Apple version shows the more traditional arrangement of cheese on the patty, while Google has the cheese under the patty. All other companies that provide emojis with their phones or apps also have the cheese on top.

So here's how it played out:

SOCIAL MEDIA: Can you believe the Google cheeseburger emoji has the cheese on the bottom? That's so weird!

MAINSTREAM MEDIA: Get a load of this controversy over the cheeseburger emojis online! That would make a great filler story if we're having trouble filling...What's that? Mueller's started filling charges? Drop the cheeseburgers, we finally have real news!

FOX NEWS: Get a load of this controversy over the cheeseburger emojis online! That would make a great filler story if we're having trouble filling...What's that? Mueller's started filling charges? Get those cheeseburgers on the air! We need distraction, stat!

THE DAILY SHOW, COLBERT, SETH MEYERS, JIM JEFFERIES, ETC.: Can you believe that while the rest of the media was reporting on the Trump Administration going down in flames, Fox news was reporting on controversy over cheeseburger emojis? Why would they think that's important. But seriously, Google's all wrong, everyone knows the cheese goes on top.

ME: That Google burger with the cheese on the bottom looks familiar. <Looks up pictures of the most popular burger at the most popular burger chain>

Just as I thought.

What The Hell Are You Staring At (On TV)?

Recently we saw a bizarre news story in which fans of the animated series Rick and Morty went crazy over McDonald's Sichuan Sauce (Sichuan? Szechuan? Supposedly "Sichuan" is the new accepted spelling.) The whole thing reached ridiculous proportions when a woman in Michigan traded a packet of the sauce for a 2004 Volkswagen GTI. I mean, I could understand a Golf, but a GTI?

If you haven't seen the whole story, here's what I've pieced together:

• Back in the 90's, McDonald's briefly offered a Sichuan sauce for McNuggets (rumoured to be teriyaki mixed with ketchup) as a tie-in with the movie Mulan.
• Recently, there was an episode of Rick and Morty that focused on an obsession with Sichuan sauce
• McDonalds tried to get on board by offering limited-edition Sichuan sauce for one day
• Perhaps they were trying to set up a Tickle-Me-Elmo style craze, but more likely they just greatly underestimated the popularity of Rick and Morty, and they didn't have nearly enough for the throngs that showed up, some after driving for hours.
• Angry fans vented online. 

I don't want to turn this into a kids-these-days rant, or more precisely, a young-adults-these-days rant. After all, Rick and Morty fits into a longish tradition of cartoons that drop into the sweet spot between children's programming that displays imagination and flexible reality, and the fertile subject matter of the adult world. And I’ve been through that too.

In the past I’ve mentioned Ren & Stimpy being popular in my early years of university. In my later years at school, Teletoon was starting up, and we wasted many hours watching Duckman. Unfortunately, it’s been largely forgotten, but if you've ever wished that Family Guy and South Park had ripped off The Simpsons’ cleverness along with its irreverence, then it was the show for you.

After leaving University and getting my Adulting Licence, I watched a few cartoons in the same vein, such as Undergrads and The Boondocks. But mostly I’ve drifted away from the genre. Recently, I've seen slightly childish adult geeks like myself making references to Archer and Adventure Time, getting that same enjoyment out of it. I do feel a little jealous.

So I actually watched a few episodes of Rick and Morty once it started getting big, and it was indeed a fun show. But it will take a while before I get to the obsessed level. I have no desire for collectable McNugget sauce, though I wouldn't mind a Mr. Meeseeks.

And that's where we get to the kids-these-days part: I can't imagine my generation going this crazy to try to get limited-edition Gritty Kitty brand kitty litter.

So I can't really explain the current obsession. It could be that adult-oriented animation has become a big enough pop-cultural force that it's now attracting a wider swath of society. Where it was once followed by a few bored students, it has now reached a critical mass where it even appeals to a number of extreme fans who will band together to do things others find strange, like swarming a fast-food outlet.

Or it could be that this is just another aspect of society's already crazy priorities. People have long paid ridiculous amounts of money for items of nostalgia. If you don't have money to spend on your obsessions - but you do have time on your hands - then spending a few hours waiting in line at McDonald's for your cultural touchstone makes more sense than spending thousands on a rare lunchbox. Fittingly, some of the more expensive items of pop-cultural nostalgia are old animation cels.

If You Can't Trust Ronald McDonald...

Lately, McDonald's has been heavily advertising their Ronald McDonald House program, which funds housing for families of sick kids who are in hospital. Of course, it's easy to be suspicious of such ads, since it's a corporation spending money to congratulate itself for spending money, and you wonder how much more they could have done with the money they spent telling us about the money they spent. Okay, in this case you can justify it because they're encouraging people to give to the cause themselves, by putting their extra change in the little box by the till.

How many customers do put money in there? I've had a few people warn me quite seriously that all those donations just go straight to McDonald's profits. Personally, I find that hard to believe. I'm no fan of corporate America, but I doubt they'd try something like that. The negative publicity if found out wouldn't be worth it. And it would require the complicity of so many people; I can understand a few sociopathic executives making an amoral decision, But not the number required here.

But what I find interesting is the huge amount of cynicism that goes into the belief that McDonald's is so corrupt. I'm reminded of something I read about philosophy profs once. It was a kind of BS detector for extreme philosophical views: ask how the views affect their actual lives.

Sometimes you'll hear a philosopher suggest something radical: say, all of reality is in our imagination, or language doesn't contain any information. So ask yourself, does the person expressing these views act like a person who actually believes those views? If you truly believe that reality is an illusion, you wouldn't navigate society the way most of us do. You'd probably cower in your bedroom yelling at the delusions to leave you alone. Or at the very least, you wouldn't let it bother you when the fictional grocery store is out of the figment of collective imagination that is cookie dough ice cream. But usually, these radical thinkers go through the same actions in their everyday lives. If their beliefs don't affect the way they see the world, you have to wonder if they really hold those beliefs, or they're just trying to sound smart or maybe shocking.

I'd apply the same technique to cynicism. If you truly believe that the world is so corrupt that McDonald's steals from its own charity, that's going to affect the way you act. After all, there are countries where such corruption is rife, and the people there act accordingly. For one thing, if you believe everyone around you is on the take, you'll want your piece of the action. You'll assume you have to pay to get things done. You won't have trust in others.

And if your faith in humanity doesn't extend to Ronald McDonald House, then there are plenty of other things to mistrust. You don't even have to leave your local McDonald's to see examples. For one thing, how can you even trust the food? Do you let your kids into the Play Place? Do you trust their debit machine? See, it's just not logically consistent to live in our world which is based so much in trust of those around you, then pick out one thing and claim an absolute lack of trust.

Yes, I know the folks bad mouthing the charity box are really just trying to justify their own cheapness. But I think that opening yourself to that kind of extreme cynicism makes you vulnerable to some bad decision making. If you occasionally and arbitrarily ignore or avoid parts of society, you'll miss out on a lot. This same kind of isolated cynicism-when-convenient contributes to the post-fact situation we're experiencing. If you're in the habit of using outlandish excuses to reject entire institutions when it's convenient, then it becomes easier to understand how you break from accepted consensus.

Burger Time With A Computer

When I was young I - like many children - didn't like mixing foods. One way that manifested itself was that I preferred my hamburgers plain, no mustard, ketchup, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun. Well actually, I was okay with cheese.

Even though that's usual for kids, it caused some problems. For instance, my parents liked to put onions in the hamburger patties. I'm not sure why, I guess they saw it in a magazine it something. But I hated it. A hamburger is the simplest food there is, so adding in something I didn't really like just made it unappetizing. Of course - as with so many things parents do - I later realized it was actually not too bad an idea.

The other casualty of my dislike for mixed foods was McDonalds. Most kids love McDonalds as much as pop-culture programs them to. But their assembly-line burgers with their blur of condiments were just gross to me. Sure, over time I got used to food with a variety of flavours. Now I have relatively few foods that I hate, and no alergies or religious restrictions, so I don't really think about the ingredients of anything I order. If I order a fast food burger, it doesn't even occur to me to hold any toppings.

Anyway, it's taken a while, but here's how far I've come: Today I used McDonalds' custom burger kiosk. And there were several levels of irony.

• McDonalds, that paragon of standardization, is betting their future on personalization
• I get to choose my topings at McDonalds, 40 years after I could have used the opportunity
• Given the choice, I put lots of weird stuff on it
• I voluntarily added onions.

It was kind of fun, bashing pictures of food on the touchscreen, trying hard to look like I know what I'm doing. But more than anything, it was one of rare points when I honestly felt like I'm living in the future. Yeah, I'm using a computer to order at McDonalds; I'm George Jetson. That's why it seems futuristic. So many of the really mind-blowing changes in our society are totally new concepts, rather than a modern spin on old things. Like you never saw Facebook in science fiction. It never occured to anyone because it's not like anything that was around then. But ordering fast food is something that's been done for decades; doing it in a gratuitously-modern way is just how I envisioned the future.

The process was fairly easy. Though in retrospect, I would have expected an easier interface from McDonalds. It also wasn't as superfast efficient as you would expect from a collaboration between technology and the Western service economy. For instance, the machine had to tell me to get a locator beacon from the counter. (Okay, I'm not sure if that's what their called; I mean the thing that identifies who you are and where your table is.) I have to ask at the counter? That cancels the system's two biggest benefits: efficiency and not talking to people.

When the burger was delivered, it came on a rustic cutting board, with the fries in a precious little deep-fryer basket. It was like what you'd expect in a chain restaurant where you have to chose between sitting at the bar or grill. But on closer inspection, the cutting board was plastic. Oh, McDonalds, even in the future, you can't help but be McDonaldsy.

This is an interesting concept, and it could change how fast food works. I've always been interested in how McDonalds organizes itself for efficiency. At the tiny McDonalds counter we used to have in downtown Kitchener, you had a great opportunity to see how everything works, because most of the food preparation happened within ten feet of the counter. So you see them making the burger patties dozens at a time, watch the worker with the condiment gun firing at each open faced bun. And you see how they try to make the maximum number of offerings from the fewest possible basic ingredients.

But now, all they have to do is have the basic ingredients available, and leave it to the customers to figure out what things they want to create out of them. So maybe one day they won't bother trying to make up standard sandwiches. Instead of researching what people want and marketing it, they'll just concentrate on getting those basic building blocks to the restaurants as cheaply as possible.

(Only after typing "building blocks" did I realize they have created Lego-as-food.)

But I'm not sure that it's going to work out they way they intended. See, I never saw anyone else getting their custom burger. Sure, I was there well after the lunch rush (I wanted as few people as possible to watch me blunder through the process.) But there were still a lot of people going through, and many were using the self-serve kiosk, but it was mostly to order from the standard menu. So maybe this personalized, lots-of-choice isn't what people want from McDonalds.

They've been trying to cater to a sophisticated clientelle for a while. They're pushing coffee, they made nicer interiors, and suddenly all their restaurants look like they were designed by a Frank Lloyd Wright fanboy. (Speaking of which, if I have any readers in Pennsylvania, could you check on Fallingwater and ensure that it hasn't been turned into a Mcdonalds.) But I don't know if any of this has really changed the way people think about Mcdonalds. It's true that as I left after my meal, I noticed there was a Ferrari in the parking lot, which has to be a first. But mostly it was just people coming in and casually ordering standardized food, same as it ever was.

So perhaps they should embrace the way we see them. For instance, instead of the cheesy cutting board, here's my idea: develop a machine that prints out the burger containers and assembles them on the premises; you can upload your own designs, so your burger comes in a traditional container, but a custom one. That way, you're getting the fast food experience, but it's a modern take on it.

Requiem For A McDonald's

Our local McDonald's is closing. Of course, this being downtown Kitchener, it's not a conventional McDonald's; it's in Market Square. That's an urban mall that has its own depressing story, but suffice to say it's yet another Canadian downtown mall that hasn't done well in recent decades. It's largely empty, even though most of it has been repurposed for other uses.

But thanks to office workers' lunch needs, the second floor food court has hung on to life, much longer than it has any right to. There are local food vendors that have come and gone, a Tim Hortons that was replaced by a Subway, and a Chinese place that I don't think anyone has noticed isn't Manchu Wok. But the McDonald's has been consistently popular.

As I say, it's not an ordinary McDonald's. For one thing, the mall's attempt to reinvent itself has meant that this is one of the few fast food places directly outside a health club.  (I've always wondered which of them benefits from that arrangement.) And being a mere counter, it doesn't even carry the full menu. Really, I think the whole place would fit in the ball pit at a suburban McDonald's Play Place.

But it's also unusual in its clientele. In an urban setting, the average wealth of the customers is probably a lot lower than your average. I've noticed that orders tend to be pretty small, many go for the free refills, and people pick and choose from the menu looking to stretch their cash. That gets pushed in your face when you're waiting for your order, and realizing customers have become experts in maximizing value.

Manager: I have three double cheeseburgers and an apple pie! Here you go sir. Who else is still waiting for their order? You sir, what are you waiting for?
Me: A Big Mac combo
Manager, to kitchen: Do we have a Big Mac meal for Mr. Big Spender here?

I guess that's a big part of why it's closing. Supposedly fast food places make their money in certain very specific items, like drinks, so I can image this place doesn't make much money. But I do worry about the many people who have been regulars. I know, as a lefty I'm supposed to blame McDonald's for exploiting the poor, but I don't see many locally-owned fair-trade artisan restaurants selling anything you could call a meal for just pocket change.

Ba-Da Ba Ba Baaa, I'm Hijackin' It

Today, McDonald's promoted the Twitter hashtag, #CheersToSochi. The idea was to have people send well wishes to athletes and organizers of the upcoming Winter Olympics.  Not surprisingly, the hashtag was quickly taken over by people protesting Russia's anti-gay laws.

This isn't the first time tweeters have turned a company's hashtag against itself. I'm left wondering how these corporations don't see it coming. It's easy to say that these companies are hopping wildly in to the social media bandwagon before they understand it. We've seen organizations misuse new technology trends throughout the Internet era.  And JPMorgan had a similar problem when they apparently forgot that some people hate banks.

But banks are kind of out-of-touch with public opinion; this is McDonald's we're talking about here. They're the masters of marketing.  If they're that clueless, what hope is there for everyone else?  They do understand that Twitter is a participation medium, not a broadcast medium.  They just don't seem to realize how varied the general public's opinions are.  So have they always believed that everyone loves them?

Still Waiting For The McDLT

The McRib is back!  Actually, I don't really care, I've never had one.  But lots of people love it; just this week I heard someone try ordering it at the local food court, and was disappointed that our fun-size McDonalds doesn't carry it.

A while back, I heard a claim that the reason the McRib is only offered intermittently is that it all comes down to pork prices.  Over the past decade, it seems that the McRib was always introduced when the price of pork went down.  So I checked out current prices; they have indeed gone down, though not dramatically. 

I wonder what else they could apply it to.  I see the price of lamb took a big dip about eighteen months ago; they missed a chance to bring in the McMutton. 

Tastes Like Chicken

Is anyone else concerned about McDonald's newest creation, Chicken McBites?  It's just a bunch of tiny pieces of breaded chicken.  Not a bad idea on its own, and the fun-loving bohemian young people in the ads certainly like them.  But really, you can't be serious that there's more of the chicken left after you've made the McNuggets? 

I can think of three possibilities:

• They've found a way to make more of the chicken edible.  Giblets, unpleasant parts of chicken anatomy are now processed into a meat-like texture.
• They've been stockpiling left-over chicken pieces ever since they started serving chicken.  So now they have to do something with thirty years of, say, chicken tongues.
• Hormones and genetic engineering have made chickens bigger.  But for some reason, the excess meet only comes in small spherical pieces.

A Reassuring Thought

McDonald's has had "third pounder" burgers for a while now.  Of course, that can lead one to be cynical about western diets, since the quarter pounder was apparently not enough anymore.  And in that cynical vein, it occurred to me to wonder how many customers choose the quarter pounder over the third pounder, wrongly thinking ¼ is bigger than ⅓.

But then I realized: This is McDonald's.  They would never introduce a sandwich without researching and focus-grouping it within an inch of its life.  If they think people will know that third-pound burgers are bigger, it's because they've done the research behind it.  So it's undeniable: North American consumers understand basic fractions.

Still no idea what the Third Pounders are called in Europe.  For that, we'll have to wait for the Pulp Fiction sequel, and that will have to wait until Quentin Tarantino sells the rights to Disney.  Okay, I've crossed the line from "blogging" to "stream of consciousness," time to go.