McDonald's Advertising in Popular Culture
Advertisements of the 1970s
McDonald’s advertisements continued to try to appeal to wider and wider audiences of people, as can be seen in McDonald’s 1979 advertisement “Nobody Can Do It Like McDonald’s Can.” In this advertisement a wide variety of people are shown including children who are bowling, a grandfather with his grandson, and a group of musicians. All of the people in this advertisement firmly say the word nobody as a song sings “Nobody can do it like McDonald’s can”. The advertisement showed almost of every type of person in America and showed them happily enjoying McDonald’s food while performing their everyday activities. According to James Helmer’s article, "Love on a Bun", “The American family recognizes the various human groups depicted in the commercials as reflections of itself”. Since the people in society were able to relate to those they saw in the commercial they were also able to relate to the things the advertisment promoted. The commercial attempted to use a bandwagon appeal to gain customers because the advertisement made it seem that since everyone else was enjoying McDonald’s other people should try it to fit in. By emphasizing the word “nobody” this advertisement placed an emphasis on the fact that nobody’s food was as good as McDonald’s competitors and therefore nobody should go another day without eating some of McDonald’s food.
In the 1970s, McDonald’s advertising began to pay more attention to its adult consumers, as opposed to its advertisements in the 60s which tended to focus either on children or the family as a whole. One such advertisement slogan that McDonalds used during the early 1970s was the phrase “You deserve a break today”. The “You Deserve a Break Today” video shows a group of McDonald’s employees who are keeping the restaurant clean. Throughout the advertisement the employees do things such as mopping, sweeping and cleaning the machines. The ad makes statements to show McDonald’s cleanliness standards such as “before you open the doors, we’ll put a shine on the floors”. The employees end the song by singing “You deserve a break today, so get up and get away to McDonald’s, McDonald’s, McDonald’s.” This ad appealed to adults because it encouraged them to go to McDonald’s and take a break from the things of everyday life, such as cooking and cleaning. This advertisement applied to two of the specific advertising appeals mentioned by Jib Fowles in his article “Advertising’s Fifteen Basic Appeals": the need to escape and the need to feel safe. The need to escape is the desire that people sometimes have when they feel overwhelmed or stressed by a situation. According to Jib Fowles’ article, the need to escape appeals to people’s desire for freedom “whenever life become too oppressive.” This advertisement appeals to the desire for freedom and escape by encouraging people to go to McDonald’s, eat a meal, and relax, because they know that McDonald’s is a clean and healthy place to be. This knowledge that McDonald’s is a clean and healthy restaurant ties in with people’s need to feel safe. By showing McDonald’s employees cleaning the restaurant with smiles on their faces the consumer realizes that McDonald’s cares about its customers and will only provide the safest and healthiest food to eat and environment to eat it in.