In this advertisement, McDonald’s makes yet another attempt to clear up any misconceptions about their food. McDonald’s food has been known to have “pink slime”, or “fake chicken” in it, and whether these things are true, this is what people believe. The ad starts by showing a sign that says “What are your questions about our food?”. People begin to walk up to this sign and press the button, which then allows the sign to record their questions. At the end of the ad, the slogan “our food, your questions” is on the other side of the sign.
Overall, this campaign has received some pretty heavy criticism. McDonald’s introduced the new slogan “lovin’ beats hatin’”, and this has sparked the criticism of many media critics and the general public. This advertisement with the interactive sign was meant to confront the “haters” of McDonald’s about their questions and concerns. However, what the advertisement leaves out is the answers. There is no part of the ad that addressed the concerns of the people who pressed the button on the sign and asked a question. In fact, what this ad seemed to do was bring up a bunch of valid points about McDonald’s food, and solidify these accusations even more into their consumers heads by not answering them.
I think it was clever to interact directly with their consumers, and I think that this new campaign brings up points that should be addressed such as the accusations against their quality of food, but they are not going about it in the right way. Their new slogan “lovin beats hatin’” has some bad connotations connected with it, and it certainly doesn’t encourage their consumers to continue buying their product. I think McDonalds needs to create a more wholesome approach in dealing with their “haters”.
Question:
1) Does the new slogan “lovin beats hatin’” have a negative connotation?
References
“Our Food. Your Questions. What Are Your Questions about McDonald’s Food?” YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 30 Oct. 2014.
Loyola Digital Advertising [로욜라 디지털 광고] 
I do not think that the slogan has a negative connotation, but I think that the interactive advertising they did was really dumb. I completely agree that it just reinforced how questionable the quality of McDonalds’ food is. What is the point of asking a question if you never get an answer? It defeats the whole purpose of asking a question. Basically, McDonalds is just inviting people to come up and voice their legitimate concerns about the product, only to respond, “quit hatin.”
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I think “Lovin’ Beats Hatin'” is a bad slogan just because it’s probably just a bad idea to combine those 3 words together. I don’t think it’s ever a good idea to have any form of “hate” in a slogan, because that kind of means that McDonalds admits that people hate them… which isn’t good marketing in my eyes. Also, when I hear those three words together, I think of domestic abuse for some reason. They really should have just stuck to their “I’m Lovin’ It” slogan.
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I strong agree with you. MacDonald doesn’t offer solutions or answers directly in this commercial, so it really doesn’t help it for rebranding or achieving other goals.
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I’m really glad that someone wrote about this in a post. I was thinking the same thing…Where are the answers?I am hoping that the next part of their campaign will be answering the questions. I think I would have been a good idea to open up a blog where they focused on answering these questions or tweet about the answers (may not be enough space to answer some of the questions though). I also don’t know how much I like the slogan. It assumes that all people who have questions regarding their products are “haters.” I’m just critical, but I do like the general idea… As long as they are prepared to answer the questions and deal with the criticism.
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