Remember the time McDonald’s created the #DownUnderBigMac hashtag and nobody used it?
Sometimes when brands attempt to tap into social media it resonates. And sometimes… it doesn’t.
Take the push from McDonald’s to tap into Australia Day by getting people to eat their burgers upside down.
Surely you know the one? That one they were doing news site takeovers to promote three days after Australia Day. Along with an outdoor advertising campaign.
You see, in Australia, because we’re at the opposite end of the world to civilisation, we do everything upside down.
Which makes eating Big Macs upside down the epitome of Australianity.
Since 1971, the Big Mac has been made with homegrown Aussie ingredients.
The only way you could make it more Aussie would be to flip it down under.
So this Australia Day, turn your Big Mac upside down and enjoy it the Aussie way.
For customers who are hard of understanding, there was a picture explaining how that might look.
But best of all the obligatory social media call to arms – cajoling customers to “share a snap of you enjoying your Down Under Big Mac”:
Which at least gives some clues on how well the campaign (update: which Dr Mumbo understands was led by digital agency VML) has resonated.
Over on Twitter, at the time of posting,the #downunderbigmac hashtag has been used precisely four times.
Once by @itsyoungdoz, who has two (yes, two) followers and was incredulous about the outdoor poster…
… twice by @nat42 (who has no followers at all) to label the campaign as “kinda dumb”…
… and once by @bluehorizonkits (98 followers) to point out that nobody has been using the hashtag…
With that sort of reach, it would have been cheaper to hand deliver an upside down Big Mac to each of the 100 people who might have been reached on Twitter.
But to be fair, you can also find hashtags on platforms other than Twitter.
Over on Instagram, it would have been possible to describe #DownUnderBigMac as a hashtag wasteland, if that wasn’t unfair to wastelands. There were precisely two posts.
Shane Geffen, a copywriter for McDonald’s’ creative agency DDB, posted an image of the ad and got 39 likes..
And Mabel Tu, an account manager at DDB, posted a picture and got 13 likes.
And on Facebook, things were even bleaker…
To date, Dr Mumbo has been able to discover no snaps whatsoever of an actual person actually enjoying an actual upside down Big Mac and actually using the hashtag.
But four days after Australia Day, it’s still not too late. Dr Mumbo implores you: Please, help out a hashtag and take a snap. Won’t somebody please think of the social media managers?
Yet another attempt by a big network in nailing ‘multimedia’.
I actually feel for the grad planner who was thrown that miserable turd of an idea and was told ‘make it social’.
Stick to TV ads guys. This digital/social/mobile stuff is totally just a fad! :/
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Are you kidding? Digital just a fad? You’re kidding right? Like that’s a joke right? Because someone who would know TV engagement is steadily falling by the quarter would only be joking about such things.
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Check your facts on who executed what.
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https://twitter.com/xaaronh/status/823689571594473472
https://twitter.com/Holgast/status/822709068783419392
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I actually like the idea, just seems a bit of a tagged on hashtag.
The farm ambient stuff got a fair bit of coverage.
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Why are they both video game guys? Coincidence?
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You’re surprised that Mumbrella hasn’t been truthful in their reporting? Are you kidding? These guys are the Trump of Australia’s media.
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I think it’s actually a pretty good idea in terms of answering their presumed brief to make Big Mac more Aussie.
I saw the billboard a million times and didn’t take out they were encouraging people to eat it that way. Should have just shown it and incentivise to do it/share it rather than hope it.
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Its articles like this that destroys our industry. This was never intended to be a social campaign. And the author of this article is even too coward to use his real name
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Yes. I was literally creaming my pants with sarcasm.
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2017, the year the hashtag died.
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Big company, big Agency, big spend, big fail… It makes a cute poster, but a full blown campaign was a stretch!
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It’s articles like this which make the Australian ad industry press sound like snarky little sex pests.
Get your freakin act in order Dr Slumpbo, outside your windowless hovel there is actual news happening, and it’s time you stood for more than Chinese whispers and lazy navel gazing.
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The giant Big Mac they built for this was slammed too. Giant junk food advertising likend to the Big Banana ? Nice one.
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You realise neither if those posts have the hashtag? So the article is correct
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Ask Canning about his McDonalds story. Was waiting to see it feature in this article.
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If you’re measuring the success of a campaign based on the volume of #’s, you’re cooked….was never going to engage anyone on socials, but not the worst idea as a creative execution. Couldn’t miss the ads too. Their sales figures would tell the story.
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My understanding is that the piece in question is an “opinion piece”, despite your assertion to the contrary, and as it would thus seem you are disingenuous (especially when taken along with the mocking tone of the offending article and that it does not hesitate to mock members of the public such as myself, to establish it’s case that such tweets demonstrate the ineffectiveness of the campaign). I therefore am not inclined to take your advice on the article being “fair dealing”.
I put it to you, that I suspect that the author, a “Dr Mumbo” is not a pen name for protecting a professionals privacy but a fictional character used for humorous effect, and that the tone established in the article makes it clear that it is not attempting to simply be a factual report of news. While I understand fair use also protects satire, my understanding is that it protects satire only when it comments on the works it takes from, and I fail to see anything transformative or making commentary about the hamburgers of the Paragon Cafe in your piece.
And if I am to be considered as a subject of your online publication’s story, again I put it to you that I should have been contacted prior to the publishing of the article: the professional courtesy to comment when one is the subject of an article may not be a copyright matter, but I believe it to be a practice of journalistic rigour, the lack of such is telling that your writers and editors did not really feel I was the subject of the article at all.
I put it to you that in fact, my tweets were my own commentary on the failure of the McDonalds campaign, and that I spent time and money capturing images to illustrate my piece which your publication “borrowed” without permission and while choosing to discredit the source; did not link back to the source and when called out on such instead of apologising or seeking permission chose to take the stance that such is permitted under law as fair dealing and hope that linking to a free legal resource might scare away further attempt to reach any amicable arrangement.
You borrowed mine and seeming others commentary on the campaign and decorated it with your own, to make a greater comment on the true subject, McDonald’s marketing, of which we were not a part of.
Try borrowing content from a larger organisation like AAP without licensing it on the grounds that it contains news, I do not believe they will stand for it. I won’t stand for my content being taken just because I am small.
Again, please remove the offending content. I have sent follow up to the content’s hosts requesting the same.
NAME WITHHELD
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Hi “Really”. I see you share an IP address with “#StopTakingShit”.
So it’s good you both agree with each other.
However, those two links provided don’t actually use the hashtag. Lucky you happened to find them, huh?
You’re right about one thing though – somebody in this comment thread is trying to peddle fake news.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Hi nat42 (or Name Withheld, if that’s your real name),
Thanks for your comments.
Which we’ve noted.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Um… Has anyone read Twitter’s ToS in sharing public tweets? Have you, Nat42? If not, maybe do so.. the tweets are embedded under fair use policy here “By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed). This license authorizes us to make your Content available to the rest of the world and to let others do the same. “
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This comments section is more delicious than an upside-down hamburger.
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This is for “Really?”/”#StopTalkingShit”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_burn_centres_in_Australia
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Junk food kills and is very, very, VERY bad for people and society.
Secondly, what on earth were McDonald’s (their agency) thinking of?
– Who eats fast food on Australia Day!?? BBQ’s: that is what happens on Australia Day.
As for faceless author. If you are part of this community you know who Dr Mumbo is. This column is a little bit of fun. It IS a bit of a tabloid style column, it’s quirky and it’s controversial it is acerbic, it is all of those things and more, in one. (If your IP address is blocked I will have a guess that you could be ‘really’ or #stoptalkingshit from above…
As you were.
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