RONALD McDONALD’S WONDER WORLD

It’s not like me to be critical of a McDonald’s advertising campaign. After all, I was born in 1972, a year after McDonald’s arrived in Australia, and so have lived life safe in the knowledge that should my fat and salt levels fall to dangerously low levels, ‘Maccas’ was just around the corner. At least it used to be. Since 1989 we haven’t had to go as far as the corner.

So pervasive have McDonald’s advertising campaigns been that without particularly trying, I landed myself a McDonald’s education. Twoallbeefpattiesspecialsaucelettuce cheesepicklesonionsonaseasemeseedbun. If you said that quickly enough in 1986 you scored a Big Mac. Twelve years later, Shakespeare quotes rote learnt for VCE English have scurried in and out of my brain, but I could still win that burger. I might not be able to tell you what Bob Menzies looked like, but have no problems recalling that Grimace is fat and purple and appeared on ice-cream cakes throughout the land in 1982. What I know about Hawaiian cuisine was learned exclusively from The Big Kahuna promotion in 1997.

So as a member of a generation constructed to rate the importance of ‘special sauce’ somewhere between carbon dioxide and oxygen, it’s not like me to be critical of a McDonald’s advertising campaign.

Nevertheless, the recent McDonald’s ‘7 Wonders of the Week’ promotion has left me feeling strangely disturbed. For those unfamiliar with the advertisements, they involve young tourists taking hand-held footage at the sites of various wonders of the world –the Pyramids, Sydney Opera House, Niagra Falls, Roman Colosseum, Acropolis, and Grand Canyon to name a few. A criticism that could have been levelled at the campaign is that McDonald’s has mixed up its wonders, failing to distinguish between the traditional categories of ancient, natural and man-made. As it happens, this criticism cannot be made, for it emerges in each ad that the ‘wonder’ is not in fact the site of international significance but rather the appearance nearby of a novelty burger, available for a short time only at McDonald’s.

It’s not necessary to express an opinion as to whether these novelty burgers are indeed ‘wonders’ - that judgement is best left to the individual novelty burger consumer. But what emerges from a glance at the ‘7 Wonders of the Week’ menu is that a key factor in each person’s decision will be how wondrous he or she regards the act of adding or subtracting meat from an existing McDonald’s product. Son of Mac means less meat. McTriple means more meat. Veggie Nuggets means no meat. Wonder away.

What is more at issue is whether a selection of locations that truly are wondrous should be lending their names to a novelty burger campaign. The truth of the matter is that the famous exteriors of these monuments exist in the public domain, and if you feel inclined to compare the Grand Canyon unfavourably with McChick, there’s no real legal impediment to doing so.

McDonald’s might argue that it is being unfairly singled out, that there’s a bloke called Mustafa selling T-towels at the foot of the Pyramids who is similarly guilty of exploiting a wonder of the world for profit. The argument has some merit, for I’ve met Mustafa, bought one of his T-towels, and had the misfortune of washing the Pyramids with my whites.

But there are three key points that make the McDonald’s campaign more problematic. The great thing about Mustafa is that he never tries to argue that his T-towels are better than the Pyramids themselves. There is an understanding that without the Pyramids there would be no T-towels. With McDonalds it’s a little less clear cut. You can’t help but think there’s a middle manager out there somewhere, with a background in laminex whose ‘absolutely dying’ to do something with one of those smaller pyramids.

Secondly, McDonald’s has not proven itself to be the most globally responsible entity the twentieth century has thrown into being. The golden arches have quietly conquered nation upon nation, significant sight upon significant sight, with scant regard as to whether a large plastic M was just the thing the attraction needed to rediscover some gritty authenticity. The ads are right. You can’t visit the Colosseum without stumbling across a Big Mac wrapper. And for those of us who still prefer the monument to the burger, we didn’t really need to have our noses rubbed in it.

Finally, there’s the artistic quality of the advertisements. It should be remembered that somewhere out there is an advertising executive, maybe he’s your next door neighbour or the person standing next to you on the train, who piped up during a brainstorming session and said, ‘Hey, what about Son of Mac!’ If the global imperialism doesn’t get you the copywriting will.

So for the time being me and Maccas are having a little spat. The restaurants continue to blow their sweet bun aromas out at me through the air vents, but I’m turning up my nose. Does this mean it’s over? Will I start turning to soy sauce for a salt fix? Well it’s possible. But then again, the ‘7 Wonders of the Week’ can’t last forever, any more than the 7 Wonders of the World could. The Big Kahuna burger will be back … and they say making up is the best part.