Bad For You

McDonald's and their media agencies should really be more careful.

For some reason I actually watched non-TiVo, live TV a couple of times recently.

One instance was an episode of "Jamie's School Dinners", in which celebrity chef Jamie Oliver helps convince schools and their students to change from fast food style meals to healthier options in their cafeterias.

The other time was last night, when I was watching a couple of shows on TLC. One was about Polygamy, and has almost nothing to do with this post.

But the other was about treatments being undertaken by various "super morbidly obese" people -- individuals so large that they can't even leave their house (and often can't even get out of bed). Obviously, a key part of these patients' problems stems from enablers who bring them too much junk food. The TV program was not subtle at all about showing all the fast food garbage that these peoples' families bring into the house.

In both cases, fast food is the enemy. McDonald's, as one of the biggest names in the field, was a common example; maybe not by name, but certainly implied.

Here's the head-slapping part:
In Jamie's School Dinners, he shows a group of young students how chicken nuggets are made. It's disgusting ("all white meat" or not).
Not two minutes later, a commercial break comes on. Guess who's advertising? Yup. And guess what product they're promoting? Yup.

The obesity show wasn't quite so bad, but in the following program (the above-mentioned polygamy show), there's our friends Mickey D again.

Okay, maybe the second example is forgivable. Perhaps its not realistic for the media planners to see what else is on the schedule near the advertised show. And it might not be feasible to avoid that channel altogether.

But, c'mon. Who was the idiot who thought "We should promote something that we know isn't the healthiest in the world on a show that's very overt and explicit about how bad our food is!" ???
It's not a new show. It's not a surprise that the "nuggets" example will come up.

Great branding, McD's.