I happen to know that in the USA, they can (and presumably, do) use plastic replicas for their photography.
(My wife saw the ones Dairy Queen used while she worked there. She says they look amazingly real, even up close)
Why Your McD's Burger Doesn't Look Like the One in the Ad
11–20 of 195 posts
Re: Why Your McD's Burger Doesn't Look Like the One in the Ad
#12This is clever (if cynical) marketing from McDonalds Canada: take one of the oldest knocks against large-scale fast food (that's it's marketed dishonestly) and turn it into a product benefit: "it's ugly because we took the original product, which is beautiful, and then uglified it to make it taste better". One thing that makes this piece cynical is that the integrity of fast food promo graphics is not a new or pressi…
In the US, they have to by law... if the photo is advertising an actual product. For instance, they could garnish the photo with a basket of fresh tomatoes, a head of lettuce, a friendly cow, etc. and that would be okay... as long as the actual product being sold is made using the as-sold ingredients. This law came about in, hm, the 60s? after the first wave of outrage over things like ice cream in advertisements bei…
Is that actually the law? If you're referring to the FTC Act, I don't see the bright-line about using actual ingredients; the law says you can't make "deceptive" statements in advertising, and the FTC clarifies "deceptive" in a policy statement as (paraphrased) "a false statement about a material fact of the product that would mislead consumers into taking an action they wouldn't if the statement were known to be false".
So, showing a 3/4 pound hamburger in an ad for 99 cent cheeseburgers would be material, but using colored caulk instead of mustard probably wouldn't be.
Re: Why Your McD's Burger Doesn't Look Like the One in the Ad
#13This is clever (if cynical) marketing from McDonalds Canada: take one of the oldest knocks against large-scale fast food (that's it's marketed dishonestly) and turn it into a product benefit: "it's ugly because we took the original product, which is beautiful, and then uglified it to make it taste better". One thing that makes this piece cynical is that the integrity of fast food promo graphics is not a new or pressi…
In the US, they have to by law... if the photo is advertising an actual product. For instance, they could garnish the photo with a basket of fresh tomatoes, a head of lettuce, a friendly cow, etc. and that would be okay... as long as the actual product being sold is made using the as-sold ingredients. This law came about in, hm, the 60s? after the first wave of outrage over things like ice cream in advertisements bei…
Really? I distinctly remember Jon Stossel having a news show in the 90s in which he showed how TV cereal commercials use glue as the milk
Re: Why Your McD's Burger Doesn't Look Like the One in the Ad
#14This is clever (if cynical) marketing from McDonalds Canada: take one of the oldest knocks against large-scale fast food (that's it's marketed dishonestly) and turn it into a product benefit: "it's ugly because we took the original product, which is beautiful, and then uglified it to make it taste better". One thing that makes this piece cynical is that the integrity of fast food promo graphics is not a new or pressi…
Even if they use ingredients from a single store it'll look 1000 times better in the picture.
The photog gets to choose the best bun out of hundreds, the best tomatoes, greenest lettuce. In the end photograph, the bun will look perfect and fluffy, the tomato sparkles, and the meat seems fresher than a live cow. Plus they may or may not, but there are "tricks" to simulate things like fake steam coming out of food, spraying glicerin or corn syrup to make it look moist(looks like water droplets), or simply cold food photographs better. On top of all that, good lighting does wonders as well.
Re: Why Your McD's Burger Doesn't Look Like the One in the Ad
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the US, they have to by law... if the photo is advertising an actual product. For instance, they could garnish the photo with a basket of fresh tomatoes, a head of lettuce, a friendly cow, etc. and that would be okay... as long as the actual product being sold is made using the as-sold ingredients. This law came about in, hm, the 60s? after the first wave of outrage over things like ice cream in advertisements bei…
Really? I distinctly remember Jon Stossel having a news show in the 90s in which he showed how TV cereal commercials use glue as the milk
Because they're not selling milk. The cereal has to be genuine.
Re: Why Your McD's Burger Doesn't Look Like the One in the Ad
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the US, they have to by law... if the photo is advertising an actual product. For instance, they could garnish the photo with a basket of fresh tomatoes, a head of lettuce, a friendly cow, etc. and that would be okay... as long as the actual product being sold is made using the as-sold ingredients. This law came about in, hm, the 60s? after the first wave of outrage over things like ice cream in advertisements bei…
Is that actually the law? If you're referring to the FTC Act, I don't see the bright-line about using actual ingredients; the law says you can't make "deceptive" statements in advertising, and the FTC clarifies "deceptive" in a policy statement as (paraphrased) "a false statement about a material fact of the product that would mislead consumers into taking an action they wouldn't if the statement were known to be fal…
From here (http://insite.artinstitutes.edu/food-stylists-blend-technica...):
"The food stylist’s magic tricks face regulation from the Federal Trade Commission and its truth in advertising laws. That Crisco-powdered sugar mix can substitute for ice cream if it’s representing a generic dessert on a menu, Allaben says, but not if it’s hawking a brand name like Ben & Jerry’s."
And here (http://www.cskern.com/blog/entryid/11):
"The truth is most of what you see in food photographs is real. FTC laws state that whatever you’re selling with a photo must be real in the image. To use a familiar example, if you’re selling corn flakes the flakes must be real. But then it gets interesting. You can use white glue instead of milk in your bowl of flakes because you’re not selling the milk, only the corn flakes."
So, the product being sold must be real as-it-is-sold (albeit much more carefully styled, generally). The incidentals can be embellished. A McD's quarter-pounder is a single product, and so presumably must be made with its actual ingredients in ads.
Re: Why Your McD's Burger Doesn't Look Like the One in the Ad
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is that actually the law? If you're referring to the FTC Act, I don't see the bright-line about using actual ingredients; the law says you can't make "deceptive" statements in advertising, and the FTC clarifies "deceptive" in a policy statement as (paraphrased) "a false statement about a material fact of the product that would mislead consumers into taking an action they wouldn't if the statement were known to be fal…
From here ( http://insite.artinstitutes.edu/food-stylists-blend-technica... ): "The food stylist’s magic tricks face regulation from the Federal Trade Commission and its truth in advertising laws. That Crisco-powdered sugar mix can substitute for ice cream if it’s representing a generic dessert on a menu, Allaben says, but not if it’s hawking a brand name like Ben & Jerry’s." And here ( http://www.cskern.com/blog/ent…
Not to be argumentative, let's stipulate that those two blog posts are true in spirit, but can anyone find the actual law or FTC policy statement that says "generic ice cream can be styled out of Crisco but Ben & Jerry's has to be real"?
Also: McDonalds Canada specifically said, in this video, that they were not embellishing the incidentals; it was exactly the same buns, exactly the same pickles, just arranged differently.
Re: Why Your McD's Burger Doesn't Look Like the One in the Ad
#18It's a great marketing video for McDonalds, but sidesteps the actual question almost entirely.
They respond to "why do your burgers look different in commercials?" by answering "here's the process of making a commercial burger."
That doesn't address the fact that a stylist cooked it on a panini grill for an hour looking the perfect brown, leading to a thicker-width burger which indeed makes their advertisements a lie.
It doesn't matter if they use the same ingredients or need to show their pickles and ketchup. They've created an entirely different product for the advertisement and will continue to sell a lesser product in place of it. The only honest answer to the original question is the obvious one: because their normal burgers look like crap.
Re: Why Your McD's Burger Doesn't Look Like the One in the Ad
#19tl;dw
They lie.
Re: Why Your McD's Burger Doesn't Look Like the One in the Ad
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
From here ( http://insite.artinstitutes.edu/food-stylists-blend-technica... ): "The food stylist’s magic tricks face regulation from the Federal Trade Commission and its truth in advertising laws. That Crisco-powdered sugar mix can substitute for ice cream if it’s representing a generic dessert on a menu, Allaben says, but not if it’s hawking a brand name like Ben & Jerry’s." And here ( http://www.cskern.com/blog/ent…
Not to be argumentative, let's stipulate that those two blog posts are true in spirit, but can anyone find the actual law or FTC policy statement that says "generic ice cream can be styled out of Crisco but Ben & Jerry's has to be real"? Also: McDonalds Canada specifically said, in this video, that they were not embellishing the incidentals; it was exactly the same buns, exactly the same pickles, just arranged differ…
I'm not a lawyer, or even an armchair lawyer, so I don't know where to look to find the applicable laws. However, there are plenty of cites from industry people saying the same thing. I assume they have to be familiar with the law that regulates what they do.
And the bun, pickles etc would have to be real by law, is what I'm saying. They're part of a single McD's product being sold by the photo.