Friday, October 23, 2015
Sunday, October 11, 2015
I'm lovin' GLUTTONY
McDonald's, being a fast food restaurant, loves to promote gluttony so that it gets more revenue.
This advertisement is no different:
http://ryanspoon.com/wp-content/uploads/mcdonalds-angus.png
This ad shows a perfect, enormous Angus beef hamburger from McDonalds, based in Oak Brook, Illinois. According to the restaurant, the burger is "AWESOME" and deserves "your full attention." The burger, being so large, already captures the attention of the regular working, fast-food-eating public for whom the advertisement is directed to. The hamburger itself is very colorful, with culinary highlights showing all of the ingredients: bun, angus beef burger, cheese, tomato, lettuce, pickles, onions, mayonnaise, and mustard. There is a description of the quality of the burger's ingredients at the bottom, saying that the bun is "bakery style," the vegetables "some of the freshest toppings around." The toppings, having the positive connotation "freshest," imply that the burger is healthy and increases the overall persuasiveness of the ad. Finally is the sentence that shows the true sin of gluttony: "Write an email using one finger. Revel in the delay." The burger is inferred to be so large and delicious that a person will need to use one finger to do an activity, and will not care of the delay.
Gluttony? Check. Sloth? Also check. Gluttony is prominent in the ad, featuring the large hamburger packed with supposedly healthy ingredients (it is well-known, however that fast food is not healthy compared with a lot of home-cooked and restaurant meals). Eating something so big and with so many unnecessary calories is encouraged by McDonalds--gluttony is glorified. As for sloth, using one finger to do most activities when one can use both hands is considered lazy. In this case, the other nine fingers are being used to eat the burger, because it is suggested to take first priority over important matters such as email. Can a person eat their burger, then write an email? Yes. But by saying, "revel in the delay," McDonalds is implying that something with a usually negative connotation ("delay") is positive and should take precedent over efficiency when eating their product. These two sins are used extensively in the ad to persuade the audience to buy the product and be slow for work (inferred by the word email) as a result.
This ad uses bold colors, placement of the burger, and heading of the popularly used word "awesome" as an attention grabber to the audience. The audience is the United States working public, as the language is in English and McDonalds is most prevalently found in the country it was created in. The talk of typing an email is, in American culture, correspondent to having a job where such action is necessary for communication. As for their socioeconomic background, since McDonalds is known to have cheap food, the ad most likely is for the lower to middle class. Paired with the email reference, the audience is further narrowed down to the non-blue-collar public who has no administrative duties.
So overall, McDonalds is using two of the seven deadly sins to advertise unhealthy food to the working class. Putting in my own bias, yeah that sounds like them.
This advertisement is no different:
http://ryanspoon.com/wp-content/uploads/mcdonalds-angus.png
Gluttony? Check. Sloth? Also check. Gluttony is prominent in the ad, featuring the large hamburger packed with supposedly healthy ingredients (it is well-known, however that fast food is not healthy compared with a lot of home-cooked and restaurant meals). Eating something so big and with so many unnecessary calories is encouraged by McDonalds--gluttony is glorified. As for sloth, using one finger to do most activities when one can use both hands is considered lazy. In this case, the other nine fingers are being used to eat the burger, because it is suggested to take first priority over important matters such as email. Can a person eat their burger, then write an email? Yes. But by saying, "revel in the delay," McDonalds is implying that something with a usually negative connotation ("delay") is positive and should take precedent over efficiency when eating their product. These two sins are used extensively in the ad to persuade the audience to buy the product and be slow for work (inferred by the word email) as a result.
This ad uses bold colors, placement of the burger, and heading of the popularly used word "awesome" as an attention grabber to the audience. The audience is the United States working public, as the language is in English and McDonalds is most prevalently found in the country it was created in. The talk of typing an email is, in American culture, correspondent to having a job where such action is necessary for communication. As for their socioeconomic background, since McDonalds is known to have cheap food, the ad most likely is for the lower to middle class. Paired with the email reference, the audience is further narrowed down to the non-blue-collar public who has no administrative duties.
So overall, McDonalds is using two of the seven deadly sins to advertise unhealthy food to the working class. Putting in my own bias, yeah that sounds like them.
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