McDonald’s latest ad is a bit like watching lettuce dry. Actually, it is literally watching lettuce dry. For 48 minutes, in fact.
In a four-hour video from Cossette posted to YouTube Wednesday morning, consumers can also watch bacon sizzle on a grill, someone cook fluffy eggs and slicing tomatoes. The film is part of a campaign to promote the new Zesty BLT McWrap.
McDonald’s positions the wrap as a quality breakfast option that will sustain people until lunch. The four-hour video is a light-hearted way to represent McDonald’s helping people through their morning, said Melanie Courtois, senior advertising manager at McDonald’s Canada. “It was us having fun with that notion and taking it quite literally.”
Of course McDonald’s doesn’t expect people to sit and watch the four hours, but scattered throughout the video are a few lines of copy—“95% of a tomato’s weight is water,” for example—that consumers will be invited to discover through social media. “We wanted to generate some smiles for our consumers,” said Courtois.
Aside from the four-hour ad, McDonald’s is also running a more digestible 30-second TV spot that shows an elderly neighbour buying a Zesty BLT McWrap for the exhausted mother of a crying baby.
The brief to the agency was to communicate the Zesty BLT tastes great, but also use more emotional messaging to convey the McWrap could help people get through a tough morning, said Courtois.
“The insight is so relevant for all moms or anyone who knows a mom,” she said. “That is where we wanted to come in as a brand and say we are there for you. The neighbour kind of embodies that for us.” We are kind of part of this moment without it being too much.”
The emphasis on the emotional resonance means the 30-second commercial makes no mention of what makes the Zesty BLT zesty (it’s the cheese) but a 15-second version in addition to social posts will be used to more directly sell the sandwich and ingredients.
The campaign comes near the end of what has been a busy September for McDonald’s. On the brand’s YouTube channel alone 19 videos (including French and English) have been posted since the start of the month, including an ad using two Montreal Canadiens players to promote the Create Your Taste platform and another that underscores McDonald’s commitment to using Canadian beef.
Early in the month McDonald’s produced four short cinema inspired spots to promote the McCafe sponsorship of the Toronto International Film Festival. Each low-budget short uses coffee beans to play with famous scenes from movies like Casablanca.
It may seem like a lot, but people are consuming content all of the time now and McDonald’s wants to connect with those people at important moments. “We are trying to be there and be relevant and in the moment,” said Courtois, adding that timeliness and having fun is more important than high production values.
“You have to be quick to be relevant so you can’t spend too much time on production or weeks and weeks in editing.”
