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Why Your McD's Burger Doesn't Look Like the One in the Ad

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Re: Why Your McD's Burger Doesn't Look Like the One in the Ad

#101
post #21

I'll disagree slightly with tptacek... this is a genius piece of marketing by McDonalds. It does everything that we routinely see listed on this very site as Best Practices™: - Respond to customer feedback in a friendly and highly transparent manner. - Don't sugarcoat things that "everyone knows but no one admits"; they could have avoided showing the graphic artist photoshopping the burger, but everyone knows that th…

[deleted]

Re: Why Your McD's Burger Doesn't Look Like the One in the Ad

#102
Most people think that the burgers that we see in the ads are just made with different ingredients, that's why they're bigger and more good looking.

She made that really clear, they use the same ingredients in both burgers. The only difference is appearance not taste.

Re: Why Your McD's Burger Doesn't Look Like the One in the Ad

#103
post #96
post #50

My own amusing anecdote: I grew up in rural Jamaica, where there was no fast food, but I came to the capital city (Kingston) twice per month, where we would always eat at KFC. So I'd never had a burger before (KFC dominates every fast food chain in Jamaica). When I was maybe 12 or 13, we had a class trip to Kingston, and after the outing, we went to a McDonalds. So I'm standing in the line, and looking at the ad susp…

You had me until "YOLO."

Well it is "The Motto" :)

Re: Why Your McD's Burger Doesn't Look Like the One in the Ad

#105
post #21

I'll disagree slightly with tptacek... this is a genius piece of marketing by McDonalds. It does everything that we routinely see listed on this very site as Best Practices™: - Respond to customer feedback in a friendly and highly transparent manner. - Don't sugarcoat things that "everyone knows but no one admits"; they could have avoided showing the graphic artist photoshopping the burger, but everyone knows that th…

You claim they responded transparently and without sugar coating anything. So what was the answer to the original question? Why does the ad burger patty appear thicker and larger? Edit: So many answers talking about how they might make a quarter pound patty look larger. Anyone can do that. I was addressing the fact that the video in no way covers why they look larger in advertisements. Sidestepping the important ques…

Another small factor at play is selection bias. They have lots of buns and lots of patties to choose from, and they choose the ones that look the best.

Re: Why Your McD's Burger Doesn't Look Like the One in the Ad

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She says the retail burger looks smaller because the bun collapsed from the moisture in the enclosed box. She also describes how they arrange the burger to "lean" in the photo, so that might add to the effect. Also the obvious reason would be the one burger was slapped together in 45sec vs. 4-5 hours of meticulous grooming: Selecting the loftiest bun, searing the edges to square up the perimeter of the patty before g…

The perspective created by the arrangement of the buns is probably a big part of it. I'm not actually sure the meat does look smaller if you lined up the photos to take the optical illusion out of it.

They do exactly that when they're showing the Photoshop workflow. The actual patty looks like it might be a hair thinner, but most of the difference is your perspective being thrown off by the collapsed bun and melted cheese from what I can see.

Re: Why Your McD's Burger Doesn't Look Like the One in the Ad

#107
I think the cleverest marketing bit from a cynic's perspective was the part where the hostess, the McDonald's Canada's Director of Marketing, confidently walks into the bright clean store, orders and obtains the burger from the pleasant staff, and pulls it out of its box in genuine anticipation and appears fully prepared to eat it when the camera cuts out.

That's the psychological button-pushing aspect of this video that's hard to duplicate in normal advertisements. In addition to the value of the realism in scenario itself, showing a Director of Marketing appear genuinely enthusiastic about the quality of the product is also a big win.

The rest of it is interesting, not really all that surprising, and undoubtedly simplified as much to fit into the desired time constraints as much as to present the issue in as positive a light as possible.

Re: Why Your McD's Burger Doesn't Look Like the One in the Ad

#110
Who cares if this is a PR stunt? It answers the question quite truthfully, they aren't hiding the fact they have a food stylist who cooks the ingredients in a different way, tactfully places the meat, condiments and salads for a good picture. It's a known fact that in every industry involving photography; clothes, food, beverages, cars, electronic products is altered via Photoshop. Perfect lighting and a great photographer are about 90% of the work and the last 10% is usually minor alterations as seen in the video.

Another reason that explains why the burgers look amazing in the advertising is because the food stylist has access to where ingredients are placed and what ingredients he uses. In McDonald's stores they just use whatever ingredients they have on hand and if you've ever worked at McDonald's or know someone else who has or does, then you'd probably know a lot of their salads are frozen/refrigerated compared to a food stylist who would have access to the freshest ingredients that haven't been frozen.

You could quite clearly see the food stylist laying out several pieces of cheese on a plate, several pickles and carefully placing where the sauces went. The meat looks bigger because it was lightly seared in a pan and most likely not ingestible. Everyone knows meat shrinks when you cook it and you can see the stylist cooking the patty in a pan, and then holding it on a George Foreman looking grill, making sure it browned evenly.

The bottom line is: nothing ever looks the same as it does in an advertisement and the fact that people still complain and bring this up amazes me. We live in a society where nothing we see in magazines, TV, the Internet or newspapers is real most of the time.

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