Hasta La Creative!

Have you heard that old myth about the McDonald’s burger makers? That there’s a team of specialist burger makers who fly around the world to make the perfect burger, shake and fries for every local ad shoot ever. We could make a movie about them, make it like Top Gun where a kid with extreme burger flipping talent gets to join the ten bestest burger flippers in the world and fly to exotic locations to make exotic burgers like the Japanese Teriyaki burger and of course, the Royal with cheese. I’m not sure what’s gonna kill Iceman yet, perhaps a freak fry accident.

Anyway, that myth isn’t true. There is no special team that creates those fab looking burgers for every ad shoot – sorry to kill the hopes of any aspiring McDonalds college kids. I just went there because in the world of global communication and global brands, perhaps there should be.

Take the latest spat that Coke got itself into. Somewhere in Germany, some “point” snack shop was carrying an old Coke poster from 2003 which shows Buddhist monks on a rollercoaster with the slogan: “Make it real” in the window still – and right now with the current newly inflamed China/Tibet wound it’s been misunderstood by a Chinese ex-pat living in Germany. A member of Tianya.com posted some photographs on the site and wrote:“Germany has started to really show adverts for Tibetan independence. Coca-Cola! Okay, I will remember. From now on I will not touch this shitty product! The three monks represent Tibetan lamas. They are riding a rollercoaster, which represents freedom. ‘Make it real’ means ‘make this [ie freedom] real'”. There are a couple of photographs of the offending old posters in situ here*. The Guardian reported “While one commenter suggested his interpretation was “far-fetched”, many more leapt to his support, pledging to stop drinking Coca-Cola.” Personally, I wish these people would stop drinking the Kool-Aid.

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