The Somewhat Ambitious

Hey y’all, you know the main man DJ Khaled? Me neither, but apparently he’s big in the ‘rap’ scene (no idea why that’s in inverted commas. Maybe so I can appear whiter than I already am) and loves McDonalds with every fiber of his being. To quote “you know how passionate I am about McDonalds”. Actually, no, but I now consider myself illuminated. He later claims, with some revolutionary zeal, ‘you know I speak for the people’ and later follows it up with the thoroughly enjoyable phrase ‘you know that double cheeseburger? Well when I take a bite, I look at it and I see a lot of bites left’. Wow, multiple bites in the same burger? Khaled, I’m sold.

Man, fast food has never been so ’street’ (again with the inverted commas). Well, actually it has, and to be honest I thought they would have learnt by now. Want to see something really cringeful? Then witness P Diddy claiming that Burger King has just crowned him the ‘King of Music and Fashion’.

Really? No. The Burger King? Hold up the rad-train Diddy, because if there’s one thing I trust fast food mega-conglomerates with it’s definitely my music and fashion choices. Why, they’ve been pioneering XXL clothes for years before hip-hop got onto it. Also, you bought a Youtube channel? Is that even possible? I’m almost positive they’re free. Sorry to break it to you Diddy, but you may have ben scammed. Although, as a result, we are now blessed with such videos as “Diddy Getting a Haircut” and “Diddy Boards Plane”. Fascinating.

I think I’ve said the word “Diddy” too many times. I’m beginning to feel light-headed.

Although McDonalds obviously witnessed the shitness here and thought ‘Ha! We can be crapper than that!’, so managed to convince Pharrell to dance and sing for a Big Mac. Although I’m sure the mountain of cash he slept on that night was of some small consolation to his bruised dignity.

So, my next question is: who are the high profile advertising agencies who get these multi-million dollar clients and campaigns to flock to them without understanding in the slightest the mechanics of a viral marketing campaign? And who are the witless corporate execs that think this is a good use of their funds? You can’t just grab a brand, staple a personality to it and expect it to spread across the Internet like wildfire. The mere presence of handheld camerawork doesn’t automatically make these ‘real people’ with ‘real taste’. They’re still the same blinged-up, Hennessey-soaked, Gucci-draped, eminently buyable humans as before, just with another fragment of their soul auctioned off to a fast food chain. It doesn’t make the brand cool, it just makes it a bit desperate.

Leroy Smith on the other hand, now there was a advertising campaign. I mean, sure I still haven’t bought any Nike products, but it did teach me that Eddie Murphy and Charlie Murphy were two entirely distinct people. So, that’s something.