Maccas On The Run

It’s fantastic to see any corporation being caught off guard. Watching Channel Ten’s primary-school-standard propaganda machine chugging into action around Merlin’s Big Brother protest last week was delicious to say the least. Even if in subsequent appearances he appeared to have been appropriately subdued. I can’t fault the man though; I find myself reaching for the worst our cultural cliché generator has to offer when I try to think of describing words: “guts”, “determination”, “top bloke” and “battler” all spring to mind. Even though the poor man was nervous as all hell when he finally had to face Gretel the next night (I missed him on Rove unfortunately).
No – Channel Ten did a fairly good job of keeping the masses happy over big scary Merlin bringing up nasty political things in front of the kids.
McDonald’s is my other latest favourite. They’ve done a lot of unconscious advertising for the movie Super Size Me’ by running 15 and 30 second ads on TV denouncing it. They refer to Super Size Me as “That Movie” as though it were a dirty little secret, like an illegitimate child.
On their website they provide a list of claims the movie makes and then refutes them, but in such a round about way that they bring up more problems for themselves than they solve. Eg:
“That Movie believes nutrition information is hard to come by.”
“(McDonald’s Australia) has nutrition information readily available in every restaurant, and on our website.”
I checked the website and the nutrition charts are very flashy and weird to navigate. I had to dig quite deep to start finding information about kilojoules, fat content, calories, etc. Even then I was still hard pressed to find information about the actual recommended daily intake. The McDonald’s website is just a lot slippery sliding primary colours. All this flashiness is surely the work of the devil!
“That Movie shows a man following a diet averaging twice his recommend daily intake of calories.”
“McDonald’s Australia would not suggest that anyone eat more than the recommended daily intake of calories.”
But all he did was eat at their restaurant! “I wouldn’t recommend that anyone calling themselves a restaurant sell food that unhealthy!” It’s the same problem with their final refutation, stating “We don’t recommend anyone (eat every meal, every day at Maccas), and suggest you enjoy McDonald’s as part of a well balanced diet.”
I think McDonald’s would have been better off if they had said nothing at all, rather than attempting to draw attention to how ‘healthy’ they are. Any restaurant that provides breakfast, lunch and dinner and then states quite clearly that you should go elsewhere for at least one of those meals is clearly losing it. Which meal should we avoid? I’m dying to know … maybe it’s dinner. What part of the ‘healthy, well balanced diet’ is McDonald’s missing out on? Is it lettuce? Salt? McDonald’s Shortening? (made from Edible Tallow, antioxidant and antifoam) Is it the bottom bit of the food pyramid?