McDonald’s bares all in new social media ads

Let’s be honest, Mickey D’s is everyone’s favourite whipping boy for everything from bad nutrition to mass consumerism – perhaps unfairly, perhaps fairly sometimes. What is true that the anonymous, detached nature of the Internet makes them an easy target for ridicule. It’s hard to run a positive social media campaign for such a polarizing company, but I think McDonald’s Canada is hitting the ball out of the park with these defiantly blunt and frank YouTube videos.

Here they show you how to make your own Big Mac:

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcu4Bj3xEyI

It’s clever, if you consider McDonald’s value proposition is convenience – not wunderkind cuisine. And here they show you exactly how they make their food look so good in the advertising. In the end, it all sounds quite reasonable:

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSd0keSj2W8

McD’s videos opens the kimono in such a way that would be considered suicidal by most, and yet they work. McDonald’s first foray into social media didn’t go so well; witness the #McDStories Twitter promotion earlier this year. They did learn an important defensive tactic against the hate parade, however – they disabled comments on their videos.