The McDonald's Japanese Advertisement.

    There's something so interesting about how an ad can spark such a ruckus throughout the community. The recent McDonald's advertisement that aired to the Japanese public has recently been receiving a lot of backlash. Not only from people in Japan, but also from the people in America. While I personally don't care to eat at McDonalds, my interest has peaked when it comes to this animation. How it's impacting the community and what that's doing for McDonalds as a company. 

McDonaldsJapan posted a short animated advertisement to their Twitter. It includes a generic family eating McDonald’s together. It features soft lo-fi music in the background and inviting colors. At the end of the video it shows a happy meal and roughly translates to, “it’s not a special, happy time”. McDonald's made this advertisement to promote their happy meals to families and remind people of the nostalgia. While this ad wasn’t to showcase any big event or celebration, but the craze the internet went through because of it is equal to none. 

    When I first saw this animation, I thought it was absolutely adorable. The colors were inviting and happy. Paired with the soft lo-fi music it was a very calming and yet nostalgic advertisement. Honestly it did make me want to get some fries, it was cute and short. Not even talking and instead just letting you feel the memories of the food. Which is why I was astonished to find such a heavy backlash against it. In just one week the advertisement had already received over a hundred million views. And many people were quick to comment about how nostalgic it was. Other comments claimed it was homophobic, transphobic, and even racist. People were even lashing out at the artist that had been paid to make the advertisement.

DailyDot mentions Stan Glass, a digital illustrator who’s portfolio centers around homosexuality, posted a redraw of the animation where “He replaced the heterosexual parents with two dads.” Which, caused him to receive hateful comments and death threats when he posted it. Many people hated the fact that he redrew over it and changed it from the original white, heterosexual family shown in the ad. This was the first of many redraws that would be posted showcasing more diverse families. The internet had created an imaginary war with itself. Fighting about the original and redrawn versions of the advertisement. Most of the people who were actually redrawing it weren’t even against the original ad either. The people in the comments just took things too far. 

         (By Stan Glass on Twitter)

Honestly, I think McDonald’s did nothing wrong here. I see nothing wrong with the original animation. It’s the community that has turned it into an issue, and the issue is between the people. The redraws are just redraws, and those who don’t like them simply don’t have to look at them. On top of that, those who claim the original is phobic in some way. They don’t really seem to realize that it’s a 21 second advertisement. There simply isn't enough time to put in more families without making the advertisement longer. And let's be honest, no one these days really cares to watch anything longer. Besides that, this isn’t the first time McDonalds has made Japanese advertisements including different groups of people However, it seems that this one just happened to receive the most backlash. 

I think McDonald’s is right for not addressing its community. Let the people figure it out for themselves and get over their little war.  I think this whole scandal has really been a failure for them, but also a positive. It might not have gotten the best response, but all of this engagement, redraws, and retweets, no matter good or bad, are helping McDonalds. Each time someone interacts with the advertisement it gets spread around to more people, it gets seen and piques people’s interest, and they end up looking at McDonalds all the same. And probably went to eat it later that day.

    From this assignment I've learned that even the simplest of things can cause issues in the media. That a community can start a backlash against something that doesn't even seem inherently bad. Which makes advertising to people harder when trying to avoid the negative response from the media. That even though McDonald's was aiming for a group of people, this decision was one that didn't fully reach sit well with the people they wanted to deliver it to.