This is the new McDonald’s commercial that’s generating all the interest online. It’s called “Come As You Are”.

In it, a teenage boy sits in a McDonald’s, wistfully looking at his class picture and caressing it with his finger while talking to the obvious object of his affection on the phone. As his father approaches, he quickly hangs up and then listens to his dad tell him how much of a ladies’ man he was at his son’s age. The eventual reveal is that the son goes to an all boys school, so the object of his affection on the other end of the phone was another boy. That’s a twist ending worthy of M. Night Shyamalan.

It’s pretty bold of McDonald’s to air such an ad. The question is, is it really necessary? Did French homosexuals previously feel uncomfortable in McDonald’s? Either way, score one for MickeyDees for scooping up the huge teenage homosexual market in France.

The French website Yagg.com interviewed the brand director of McDonald’s France, Nathalie Legarlantezec, and got this explanation:

“We wanted to take a look at how French society is today. We’re very comfortable with the topic of homosexuality, there is obviously no problem with homosexuality in France today”. While the statement sounds a bit naive in a country where same sex couples cannot legally marry nor adopt, the idea was to give a positive image of the brand: “The point was not to show someone who is troubled, especially a teenager. We know it can be difficult for some people, but we wouldn’t have dared show someone who is struggling”.

It looks like Kellogg will be ending its endorsement deal with giant torso and Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps after a picture of him smoking a bong have surfaced in the UK tabloid News of the World. Phelps admitted to smoking weed and apologized for his “regrettable” behavior and “bad judgment”, and blamed it on youthful indiscretion. This really won’t put a dent in his income though, since he still on board with a load of major sponsors like Visa and Speedo.

Still, Kellogg said Phelps’s actions are “not consistent with the image of Kellogg.” So they’re not renewing his contract when it expires at the end of February. The thing is, I’m happy about it. Now, don’t take that the wrong way, I’m 100% for the legalization of marijuana. The “war on drugs” is the reason the United States has the highest population of prison inmates in the entire world. The US has 5% of the world’s population, and nearly 25% of it’s prisoners. It’s not just per capita either; the US actually has 2.3 million criminals in it’s prisons, more than any other country; all because of the “war on drugs”. So I don’t care that Phelps smoked some weed, that means nothing to me. I’m happy he’s off Kellogg cereal boxes because he’s a freaking douche. Read on for my rationale:

Really, come on. He wears popped collars and crooked hats. He’s known for being the notoriously annoying douchebag at parties. I don’t care how fast he swims or how disproportionately long his freak-torso is compared to a non-aquatic human’s. He’s a DB, and I don’t want to look at his creepy, hairless dolphinbody in the morning when I’m eating my Corn Flakes. I mean, really, look at this:

Have you ever seen anything so annoying? I don’t care if the Sports Illustrated people made him pose like that, I don’t care about the Mark Spitz comparison. He looks like a retarded person with a bunch of foil-wrapped chocolates around his neck. Just say no to the silly picture, Mike. It’s the most ridiculous and garish display of douchebaggery I’ve seen in a long time.

Stay off my cereal, oddball.

Burger King is all about the viral kookiness these days, and their latest advertising enterprise is actually pure genius. They’ve created the “Whopper Sacrifice,” Facebook application, which will give you a coupon for a free Whopper if you delete 10 people from your Facebook friends list.

Burger King got me interested with their Whopper Virgins ads, and initially I loved this campaign because of how it seemingly makes fun of all the Facebook obsessed freaks out there. The website says: “Now is the time to put your fair-weather Web friendships to the test. Install Whopper Sacrifice on your Facebook profile, and we’ll reward you with a free flame-broiled Whopper when you sacrifice ten of your friends.” And the app actually makes each “sacrifice” show up in your activity feed for everyone to see. It says something like “Vito sacrificed Jimmy James for a free Whopper.”

But I thought about it, and wondered what BK could possibly gain from this. And then it came to me:

The Kicker: The Foot-in-the-Door

In Social Psychology, there’s a tactic called the Foot-in-the-Door (FITD) technique which involves getting a person to agree to a relatively small request first, after which they’re more likely to agree to a larger request. Basically you ask for a small yes, then you can get a bigger yes, and so on. There have been a number of studies into the effect. For example, back in the 60s, some scientists asked people to either sign a petition or place a small card in a window in their home or car about keeping California beautiful or supporting safe driving. About two weeks later, the same people were asked by a second person to put a large sign advocating safe driving in their front yard. The people who agreed to the first request were far more likely to agree to the second. This tactic works because the human brain wants to be consistent, we always strive to align our opinions with what we know we’ve said in the past. That’s why “flip-flopping” is looked down on, even though, if you think about it… changing your opinion in the face of new evidence is actually a good thing.

So what Burger King is doing here is quite genius. Even though people think it’s no big deal to drop 10 “useless” friends to pick up a 2 dollar coupon, it may actually be having an effect on them. I wouldn’t be surprised if, after this campaign comes and goes, the customers who dropped friends for the coupon were actually more likely to frequent Burger King than those who didn’t engage in the friend dropping. Psychology plays a big part in advertising, now you know.

Up until this afternoon, I was totally unaware that the cereal eating habits of society change during the colder parts of the year. It makes perfect sense though; apparently, cold cereal sales drop off during the winter months as people switch to hot breakfasts like oatmeal and farina.

In an attempt to keep customers eating their daily bowl of cold corn flakes during the autumn months leading up to winter, ad agency JWT London has created this “ambient” campaign for Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut CornFlakes. They enlisted the pavement artist Jon Hicks to draw large Kellogg’s bowls around London sidewalks, and sweep the autumn leaves into them to emulate the cornflakes. Clever stuff. Check out some pictures of Jon Hicks working:

Burger King has finally kicked off it’s slighted twisted take on the classic taste test this weekend. If you haven’t yet seen the set of 15-second teaser ads leading up to the launch, the campaign is a taste test with participants who’ve basically never heard of a hamburger. It features various isolated peoples from around the world, hence “Whopper Virgins”, to participate in the “world’s purest taste test”. They asked Thai Hmong tribesmen, Transylvanian farmers, and some Inuit from Greenland to choose either the Whopper or the McDonald’s Big Mac.

This is the latest bit of marketing from BK’s agency, Crispin Porter & Bogusky. CP+B is also responsible for previous ads like the motivational spoof Dr. Angus, the Whopper Freakout day where customers were told Burger King no longer sold Whoppers, and all the ads featuring the exceedingly bizarre King. This ad seems like the most ambitious to date though. “We wanted to see how the Whopper would perform in a world that didn’t have ad or marketing awareness or any sentimental attachments” says Russ Klein, president of BK’s global marketing. Of course, even before the main ads came out, tons of people were offended, as people often are. Read on:

Among the offended are the legions of comfortable, first-world, self-hating American bloggers who will find any reason at all to be angry at a multi-national corporation. In this case, they consider the Whopper the forbidden fruit that’ll suddenly give the tribesmen knowledge of evil Western ways, force them to abandon their culture, and get them kicked out of their Garden of Eden. Once they taste those delicious trans-fats, they’ll instantly give up their 20 hour work days and seal meat breakfast and move to Hollywood.

It’s such ridiculous and transparent anger. We should feel lucky though, that we have the free time to get offended when a group of people thousands of miles away gets fed hamburgers. The number of things a society gets offended by is directly proportional to it’s level of wealth.

Despite all the outrage, these are very clever ads. The whole campaign is well done… the teaser ads give that anticipation and build up to the main ads like they’re going to be some sort of event. Plus, the idea of the taste test generally does well in advertising, and this is a nice, sideways take on it. The implication is that MacDonalds is on top because of their name recognition, yet Burger King has the inherently quality food. They wanted to convey that idea while at the same time making hip, aesthetically pleasing ads. The message comes across that, once you get past all the names and BS, the Whopper is the better burger. The truth, of course, is that that’s just advertising too, and both companies just make garbage food for fatties. Still, well played BK; well played CP+B

Check out the set of 15-second teasers and get pissed:

Transylvanian Farmers

Thai Hmong tribesmen

And the campaign’s website:
WhopperVirgins.com

Kraft Foods Stove Top brand will be pumping warm air and delicious stuffing into some the chilly bus stations around Chicago this month. Out of the 50 bus shelters getting Stove Top print ads, ten lucky shelters will get specialized Stove Top ads with temporary heating units in the ceilings. The company also plans to hand out samples of it’s new Stove Top Quick Cups instant stuffing in the streets of the windy city.

The new ads read, “Cold, provided by winter. Warmth, provided by Stove Top.” Apparently, this is the first time heated bus shelters have been used for advertising in the US. Why don’t they pump delicious stuffing smell in with the heat? Well, we all remember what happened with the GOT MILK? cookie smell campaign. They pumped in the delicious smell of cookies into various bus shelters around San Fransisco hoping that the smell would get people craving a glass of milk, but instead of making commuters get all hungry for cookies and milk, the snooty SanFransiscans complained. Only in San Fransisco could people complain about the scent of freshly baked cookies.

Anyway, check out a list of all the heated locations and the locations of the free samples:

Here’s a list of the heated bus stop locations, and more importantly… the locations of the proposed free stuffing samples (the * denotes a location with free stuffing samples):

— 16 S. Clark Street (Clark Street & Madison Street)
— 197 N. State Street (State Street & Lake Street)
— 300 N. Michigan Avenue (Michigan Avenue & Wacker Place)
— 431 N. Michigan Avenue (Michigan Avenue & Hubbard Street)*
— 757 N. Michigan Avenue (Michigan Avenue & Chicago Street)*
— 538 W. Madison Street (Madison Street & Clinton Street)*
— 1 E. Washington Avenue (Washington Avenue & State Street)*
— 5 N. Michigan Avenue (Michigan Avenue & Madison Street)*
— 221 N. LaSalle Drive (LaSalle Drive & Haddock Place)
— 533 N. Dearborn Street (Dearborn Street & Grand Street)

So any AdSavvy readers in Chicago, print this list out and head to your nearest homeless man. The homeless will be fed this season, on Kraft Foods.

Today, Dr. Pepper is giving away free coupons to all buyers of Guns N’ Roses Chinese Democracy. Last March they made a bet against the prospects of a release in 2008. They lost.

Well, not really. The viral branding that Dr. Pepper is getting from this promotional tactic is priceless. It’s better than a Super Bowl commercial. The net is ablaze with people trying to get their coupon.

If I was a betting man, I’d suggest that this whole thing was set up from the beginning. Dr. Pepper knew full well that Axl Rose would get Chinese Democracy out in time because they arranged the promotional campaign together. And just look. It’s a win-win-win. The consumer gets a coupon for a free Dr. Pepper. Chinese Democracy gets free news coverage and a massive PR blitz. Dr. Pepper magnifies their brand by about 10 times.

There are no losers here. It’s a brilliant marketing move. Bravo Dr. Pepper. Bravo Guns N’ Roses.

The Economist is one of my top five favorite magazines, I read it regularly. I also live in the Philadelphia area and eat pizza quite often. So I’m excited about The Economist’s new advertising plan: they connected with over 20 pizzerias in the Greater Philadelphia area, most of them near college campuses or dorms, and supplied them with Economist-branded pizza boxes. Each box has a pie chart that connects pizza consumption with global economics and politics. They encourage people to “Get A World View”.

This kind of ambient advertising is always interesting. Publipizz, a maker of advertising pizza boxes, estimates that a box of pizza is looked at by 3 people for at least 8 minutes and results in an 80% memory retention rate. Plus, boxes with advertising on them are less expensive for pizzerias, which makes them more likely to join in.

I really love this idea. Pizza eaters will get to learn what it took to get that pizza to their stomachs. But the idea is more than just informing consumers about pizza production; it’s about getting youth interested in the news, economy, politics. Plus it reinforces how big a part capitalism plays in all our lives. Too often people, usually young people, forget how the free market brings people together, and they dismiss capitalism as a bad thing. Hopefully a small thing like these pizza boxes will help students realize how markets bring us all together.

It reminds me of Milton Friedman’s Pencil:

Hey ladies, do you want your kids to grow up big and strong like David Beckham? How about your husbands? Well, there’s now a food product heartily endorsed by the superstar, and it’s supposedly healthy and delicious.

David Beckham Brand fishsticks. Yes, fishsticks… actually they’re called “fish fingers” by the weirdos in the UK. Delicious and healthy fish fingers fortified with extra omega-3s, with Beckham on the cover.

Beckham has said: “As a Dad I know how hard it is to get kids to eat the right things. I also know as a footballer, how important it is to eat the right things to perform well, so I think the GO3 range is a great way to help families take some small steps to be fit and healthy at affordable prices.”
If you eat Beckfood Fishstickz, you’ll grow up and look like this:

via Popcrunch

So the Hannah Montana people wanted to sell some sort of Hannah Montana-related candy, great idea. She appeals to kids, kids love candy, it all works. But they should have at least looked in to the manufacturer of the generic “guitar” shaped candy before they got involved. At the very least, they could have mixed the colors up a bit. I mean, flesh pink?

via Popcrunch – Guitar Shaped Hannah Montana Candy