If you had any doubts, sex can indeed sell anything - even hamburgers.
It is interesting to see how a product most of us grew up with is being marketed to a new (and unsuspecting) audience in China. No scary clowns in this advert of "trendy" bodies.
Real Player VersionSex, Skin, Fireworks, Licked Fingers -- It's a Quarter Pounder Ad in China
September 21, 2006
SHANGHAI, China -- Beef is luxurious. Beef is healthy. And, yes, beef is sexy.
These are the messages McDonald's Corp. is sending Chinese consumers as it tries to seduce them into eating more hamburgers. One racy billboard ad features a close-up of a women's lips; on another ad on the door of restaurants, a woman runs her hand over a man's flexed biceps. "Flirt with your senses," signs say.
The campaign -- supporting the introduction in China of the Quarter Pounder -- is part of a shift in strategy for McDonald's. The company recently started focusing less on selling menu items created especially to appeal to local Chinese markets and more on pushing traditional American hamburgers.
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The burger chain's TV commercials are even racier than the print ads. In one spot, a man and a woman eat Quarter Pounders, and close-up shots of the woman's neck and mouth are interspersed with images of fireworks and spraying water. The actors suck their fingers. The voice-over says: "You can feel it. Thicker. You can taste it. Juicier."
A series of lighthearted print ads in trendy magazines lay out scenarios in which beef saves the day. In one, a young man frets that five women he has met online want to go out on dates with him the next day. The ad offers some solutions: Hire four friends. Split up the meetings. Or "have enough beef tonight" so he "will be able to handle five princesses tomorrow." The ad urges readers to "inject protein and vitamins into your trendy body" by eating the Quarter Pounder.
