McDonalds Advertising

Everyone eats McDonalds. It's cheap, easy, and greasy. Who wouldn't love it? But recently, since learning about companies using certain words or phrases in advertising to be more appealing, I've been looking at every ad differently now. I've been analyzing the wording and searching for evidence to confirm what I've been taught. The other day I went to McDonalds to eat and I look at the ads that are displayed everywhere in the restaurant. Literally everywhere. There is no hiding. Anyways, I started looking at these ads and realized I found the ambigous language that we had been learning about in class. They use words like 'bliss' or 'tender'. Even their kids meals are called 'happy meals'! They use these words so people associate good things with their food. It's a quite simple technique: Use a word with positive connotations, relate it to the food that is being advertised, and suddenly the brain is associating chicken nuggets with happiness! It's crazy how unaware I was to these types of strategies, it wasn't until I got an ad from McDonalds as I was watching YouTube. This ad talked about their new donut sticks, and how they could brighten your day with just one bite. This alarmed me in a way because the language they used was so vague and non-specific that if I wasn't listening closely, these donut sticks would've sounded very appealing. And although I'm only talking about one company, every company does it. It's just so crazy to me that a word can make a big difference in how things are perceived in advertising.

Comments

shay meyer said…
Ayy I just did one of my blogs on a McDonald's ad also. When I think about it, nearly all of McDonald's advertising uses pretty blatant and somewhat manipulative techniques similar like what you mentioned in this blog, and now that I think about it, these techniques have given McDonald's a very distinct and positive image from their advertisements that is not reflective of McDonald's food really at all. If you were to strip down McDonald's food, it's all cheap, greasy, half the time not what you ordered, and often times tastes like it was pulled fresh from an armpit (still love it thought don't get me wrong). The vague language and simple associations they use in their ads presents both the McDonald's experience and the food as fresh, simple, and much better for you than it really is. These generalizations also show how McDonald's has successfully become a 'lovemarked' brand; they sell people the simple feelings of happiness rather than the quality of their food.
December 9, 2019 at 8:04 PM
Anonymous said…
I agree with your points and how you explained it very well. I think many large companies use positive connotations of words in association with their products. Something I would add is the fact that in order to recognize these advertising methods we have to look deeper into the ads. However, I think the ads are farley surface level and we could recognize them very quickly if we actually comprehend what we were seeing and reading. Instead, we quickly skim and don't actually realize what is actually being said. This is, I think, rooted from how impacted we are by all types of media. We see it everyday almost every second that we are so used to it. Instead of questioning what is it we are reading we recognize it all the same and continue to let ourselves be fooled. I believe this is the root reason for their success in advertising.
December 9, 2019 at 8:51 PM
Anonymous said…
Mc Donald's is anothyer company that does this. I've also sen this with Chik-fil-a, and in-n-out. Another advertisement tactic that Mc Donald's uses is their colors. Apparently, red and yellow are supposed to make you hungrier, therefore, more to buy their food.
December 16, 2019 at 3:53 PM
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