The NY Times Magazine is running a glossy feature this weekend exploring the sickening quest for 'authenticity' that has defined the shiny cubicles of McDonald's HQ over the past year.
This is the kind of stuff nightmarish corporate PR cliches are made of:
"It was a simple plan. McDonald’s would pay to appear at the top of the trends list on Twitter’s home page, using the social-media site to drive people to its new commercials highlighting some of the real-life farmers and ranchers who supply McDonald’s with its ingredients. Executives at the fast-food company loved the commercials; the word in-house was 'authenticity'...McDonald’s wasn’t about fast food, the commercials suggested, but real food, born of the earth."
And what about how this drive for an undeservedly wholesome image is impacting the restaurants themselves? This one really takes the cake:
"The restaurants themselves are changing, too, adding...flat-screen TVs playing the McDonald’s Channel. The content on the nascent channel is breezy (think Top 10 lists) and anodyne. The objective is 'an agnostic view of the world,' according to Lee Edmondson, the founder of ChannelPort Communications, the California company building the channel for McDonald’s (its only client)...the audience, Hunter says, 'is everyone.'"
A TV channel that doesn't believe in anything, just like the profit machine that dreamed it up.
This is the kind of stuff nightmarish corporate PR cliches are made of:
"It was a simple plan. McDonald’s would pay to appear at the top of the trends list on Twitter’s home page, using the social-media site to drive people to its new commercials highlighting some of the real-life farmers and ranchers who supply McDonald’s with its ingredients. Executives at the fast-food company loved the commercials; the word in-house was 'authenticity'...McDonald’s wasn’t about fast food, the commercials suggested, but real food, born of the earth."
And what about how this drive for an undeservedly wholesome image is impacting the restaurants themselves? This one really takes the cake:
"The restaurants themselves are changing, too, adding...flat-screen TVs playing the McDonald’s Channel. The content on the nascent channel is breezy (think Top 10 lists) and anodyne. The objective is 'an agnostic view of the world,' according to Lee Edmondson, the founder of ChannelPort Communications, the California company building the channel for McDonald’s (its only client)...the audience, Hunter says, 'is everyone.'"
A TV channel that doesn't believe in anything, just like the profit machine that dreamed it up.
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