No promise
of sales, celebrity endorsements or even delicious tasting food in
this ad. It is purely a giant order of McDonald's to the face. And it
is exactly that, the sheer simplicity of this ad that makes it so
accessible. Oftentimes people will remember particular advertisements
because they were humorous or demonstrated a good degree of
creativity. This particular advertisement manages to achieve this
same effect and more.
This
ad makes use of an existing pedestrian road crossing. Cleverly
placed, the location is familiar and acts as a funnel where ALL
passersby must cross in order to cross the road. The location is a
mundane and familiar route to its users, so it doesn’t take
professor to recognise that what was black and white lines yesterday
is now a giant order of fries (Cialdini, 2001). I'd say the mere
contrast between the dull grey street and this striking red and
yellow masterpiece would be enough to distract any walker-by. By
adding a bit of fun to people's humdrum corpse-like drag to work,
this ad will be more memorable and received with greater positive
regard (Sundar & Kim, 2005).
The
simplicity of this ad works in tandem with the short attention span
of pedestrians. On their way to work, they all they are probably
thinking of is “Walk. As quickly as possible. Don't get run over.”
all of these thoughts fit well with this advertisement because the
message is still conveyed with minimal effort from the target. The
iconic red and yellow 'M' that we all know to be synonymous with
McDonald's is the key because, not much else is present or even
necessary. This ad aims to achieve one thing only; to increase the
thought of having a meal at McDonald's - and thats it. Research has
shown that by just making someone think of something more they are
more likely to act based on this thought (MacLeod
& Campbell, 1992). So by simply
making you think of McDonald's, you are already more likely to decide
to eat at McDonalds for lunch as compared to other shops because it
readily comes to mind. Such mental shortcuts are commonplace,
especially in the midst of a busy work environment where you don’t
want to spend all that extra effort trying to think of where/what to
eat. Take home message: in the city less is definitely more.
References:
MacLeod,
C; Campbell, L. (1992). "Memory accessibility and probability of
judgements:An experimental evaluation of the availability
heuristic". Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology 63 (6):
890–902
Sundar,
S. S., & Kim, J. (2005). Interactivity and persuasion:
Influencing attitudes with information and involvement. Journal
of Interactive Advertising,5(2),
6-29.
Nicely written.
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