Absurdly Driven looks at the world of business with a skeptical eye and a firmly rooted tongue in cheek.
Pressure can make you do irrational things.
Well, more irrational than usual.
In the fast food business, the pressure is extreme as ingrate customers demand better, faster, healthier and tastier.
Who do these people think they are? Don’t they respect the traditions?
Oh, they barely respect last week these days.
So McDonald’s, being the big target, has to invent newer ways to consume its fine delicacies every day.
It’s trying true revolutions such as, oh, fresh beef — that one’s making some customers a little tetchy.
It’s even trying touchscreens — which some people like for the most perverse of reasons.
But no, the burger chain is really reaching.
In a couple of new ads, McDonald’s wants you to pretend you’re serving a home-cooked meal when you’re dishing out a fine helping of its buttermilk chicken tenders.
I know. The sheer gall.
Buy McDonald’s. Cheat Your Family.
Here’s grandma insisting that she’s found chicken tenders that can pass as her own.
Honestly, she’s not going a fine way about it.
I suspect that large McDonald’s bag is going to give things away.
Worse, how long ago were those things fried?
If she has friends or family coming over, she’s either going to have the tenders delivered (McDonald’s is testing that right now) or she’s going to have to go out, buy them and then reheat them.
Unless, of course, she’s the sort of grandma who serves cold food because she deeply dislikes all her visitors.
In another ad, it appears that her friends are OK with this.
Perhaps they’ve adopted the very same strategy of disregarding their nearest and dearest.
I remain concerned.
Subterfuge requires real talent.
You can’t just blithely pass off McDonald’s as your own.
Especially as someone’s going to want fries to go with them.
Then what are going to do? Tell them you’ll pop to, oh, McDonald’s to pick some up?
I’m all for giving grandmas more freedom. And not just grandmas. Everyone. Well, except children.
I fear, though, that a litigious grandma might trouble McDonald’s here.
This is advertising, right? It’s supposed to offer true, verifiable promises.
At least, that’s what my friends at Facebook tell me.