McDonald's morphs and revitalizes brand image with well-executed TV spot for Southwest Salad

Nation's Restaurant News, May 7, 2007 by Gregg Cebrzynski

If you've seen the TV spot for McDonald's new Southwest Salad you're probably wondering the same thing I am: Why can't they all be this good?

McDonald's TV spots, I mean, not the chain's salads.

Created by DDB Chicago, the spot is more entertaining than any I've seen for the chain in years. But it goes beyond mere entertainment by including a strong product message and great food photography.

This is one well-executed commercial.

It opens with a poblano pepper twirling into view as the voice-over says, "Poblano pepper releases my fiery spirit." Then it morphs into a dancer wearing a dress the same color as the pepper. She twirls around just like a poblano pepper. The next shot shows tortilla strips flying across the screen and becoming yellow-costumed dancers. They look as if they're wearing one-piece swimsuits. "Crunchy tortilla strips match my snappy attitude," the voice-over says.

Get the picture? When the roasted tomato comes into view it soon morphs into a dancer wearing a fiery-red dress.

Right about now you're wondering about the lime. "As for the zesty wedge of lime," the voice-over says, "it adds kick to my flair for the dramatic." To illustrate that flair, the dancer in the lime-colored dress claps her hands wildly above her head.

The spot ends with a shot of the McDonald's Golden Arches and the "i'm lovin' it" tag.

But wait, there's more!

The arches suddenly morph into two dancers wearing skin-tight yellow outfits who spring up and bid bye-bye to each other before walking off-screen.

A jazzy number plays over the action throughout.

There's not a wasted shot or an unnecessary spoken word in this commercial. The dancing, voice-over and music work together flawlessly to showcase all that's good about the Southwest Salad.

It's unusual to find this combination of production values in a McDonald's commercial. During the last five years only a baby's handful of spots have been executed well enough to give viewers a reason to lift their haunches off the couch and go buy a Big Mac.

Two spots in the "i'm lovin' it" campaign in 2004 were standouts, but there haven't been any exceptional ads since then. The recent commercial for McDonald's premium coffee featured an annoying morning person named Rick, but he was amusingly annoying and delivered a strong product pitch.

For the best spot in recent years you have to go back to 2003, or so I say. DDB Chicago also created that one, titled "Tough Day." It showed a father and son trudging into the house and talking about how awful the day went for them. Morn overhears them and says, "Boy, you guys look like you need some McDonald's."

As I wrote at the time, it was a solidly done image ad reminiscent of commercials McDonald's aired in the early 1970s.

This spot for the Southwest Salad isn't reminiscent of anything McDonald's aired previously, except for the general quality of the spot.

But McDonald's and its agencies do not have to mimic the past to deliver great creative content in advertising, and this spot illustrates that.

It has a vibrancy that matches McDonald's phenomenal sales turnaround. That may be a coincidence, but it's a perfect match of advertising and brand.

I never pretend to know what consumers are thinking, but I've got to believe that anyone watching the ad will come away with a good feeling about McDonald's as a place to eat.

It's as if this one ad out of the many over the recent past is giving old McDonald's a new, energetic image.

gcebrzyn@nrn.com