Peter York on ads: No 211: McDonald's - They really get my goatee
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Your support makes all the difference.WE ALL KNOW the New Interior Design: a bit of Minimal, flat planes of colour, a lot of white, and very big, as in R for Restaurant. And we sort of know the designers who do it - bald or cropped, stubbled or goateed. Advertising hasn't been featuring this interior-design look that much - though the hipper advertising agencies all have it in their reception areas.
So when you see the New Look - a big, pillared white space from a funny angle, a single Significant Chair and a designer type - you think, here's a Shoreditch Shaven Smartie endorsing something. And at first, they let you go on thinking that. He's not exactly modest, this visionary, caught at funny angles himself with deeply moody lighting, but that certainly goes with the territory. So when he says that "some people would call me an interior designer. That is such an inadequate description," you just hope that Harry Enfield's watching.
Only when he goes on to say that "every room has an inner personality" do you start to think that this might just be a set-up. Then, when he folds his arms and says "Yes, I cost a little more, but then the best always does," you know it. So when a raucous voice says that "you too could make a load of money doing absolutely nothing" you're expecting it - though you're still none the wiser about the advertiser. It turns out to be McDonalds's Money for Nothing competition: you could win over pounds 100,000 just by taking your little darlings to McDonald's for their birthday treats.
It's lovely to see the poncy design proselytisers sent up. But I do wonder whether this is a type of person that the McDonalds' audience is that bothered with.
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