Sunday, February 6, 2011

What is this I don't even

Speaking of a lack of creativity...



See, McDonald's, here is the problem. You hired an ad agency to make a commercial for your new McCafe drink. And then the person on your account forgot about the presentation until the morning of, and just grabbed something he found on YouTube.

The bigger problem, though, is that hand dancing is annoying. I'm sorry to all you hand dancers out there - it is. Well, let me qualify that. If I decided to go to a hand dancing show (I'm assuming such things exist? I have no idea, since until I saw this commercial I was not aware that hand dancing was a thing at all), then fine, I know what I'm getting into. This commercial, however, posits that I would like to see a hand dancing show spontaneously break out in the middle of a McDonald's at like 9 in the morning. Look at all the editorial bullshit that gets worked into this ad in just 15 seconds: multiple people look over and smile, and one dude even whips out his smart phone for a little video. Can you imagine reacting like that if you were there? I'm fairly sure I would leave at the first opportunity and stare a hole in them up until that point. Because that is fucking annoying as all get-out.

These two are also revoltingly proud of themselves - look at the way they finish, like they're concluding the gold medal pairs skate at the Winter Olympics. Of course, if I put up a video of my more or less useless talent on YouTube and the world's biggest restaurant chain paid me thousands of dollars to do it in a commercial, I'd probably be all smug too. Doesn't make it less obnoxious. Things aren't helped by the ridiculous song - there are multiple YouTube comments that are like "I love this song, do you know the title?" Are you fucking kidding me? If you "love the song" surely you must have been able to understand the lyrics, which as far as I can tell go like this:

"Is there chocolate / is there whipped cream / is there caramel / in espresso they're mixing"

The end part was a little harder to pick up but it's something like that. Whatever. The first three parts are certainly right. The chances that there was an existing song that just happened to describe a caramel mocha espresso are roughly 975 quadrillion to one against. Who would think this was a real song? Also, real or not, it sucks. (And is it me or do those whipped cream toppings fail to move at any point during the commercial? I call bullshit.)

You know what this reminds me of? 80s movies. In the 80s, no matter how lame your sport or activity, no matter how unable it was to sustain a movie for two hours, there was still a movie for absolutely everything. Breakdancing? Hell, there was Breakin' and Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo. BMX biking? Rad. Skateboarding? Gleaming the Cube. Arm wrestling? Over the Top. Gymkata? Gymkata. Were all these movies shitty? Of course they were! And one reason why is because a movie should never have been based around a niche activity in the first place. Granted, this is a 15-second commercial and not a two-hour movie... but hand dancing is way less interesting than any of those other things. The point is that just because someone has a YouTube video does not mean you have to put them in a commercial. Are you listening, Wonderful Pistachios and Geico?

6 comments:

Kyle said...

When I saw this on tv I was just completely confused.

Is McDonald's actually trying to make this look like a random event that happened in their store, to which people all started filming?

And if they do acknowledge that it's just a made up commercial, then I am forced to assume it's their secret little fantasy that people will come in and do something unbelievably annoying with their Caramel Mochas so that everyone astoundedly and starts filming it.

Does Mickey D's even know what reality is anymore?

Anonymous said...

That commercial really sucks.

Anonymous said...

I cannot agree more... it appears by typing "mocha commercial sucks" that this is a well hated video. No problem right? well you watch tv today (I have 80 channels by the way) and notice they played this commercial 3+ times on multiple channels. I would have posted this, but the guy who made this blog is my daily hero. 100% spot on blog post regarding this tasteless, hugely annoying commercial from mcdonals.

I will not visit mcdonalds for a month or more now, just because of this commercial....and I go there quite a lot.

PS: if you made this commercial, and thought it was a good idea I hope you get fired from your advertising job, as you truly suck at making a decent commercial...its THAT bad.

Anonymous said...

i like the commercial, i think its a splash of fun to an otherwise irritating assembly of car ads

Unknown said...

Everytime this ad comes on TV I want to:
1. stick knives in my eyes
2. puncture my eardrums
3. find out who created this awful campaign so I can harass them till they close their doors for good!

Anonymous said...

At last, a commercial that appeals to all those people who both A) get way too jittery from caffeine and B) think feet shouldn't have *all* the fun during "Riverdance".