It's what's in the bag!

The McDonABarfBag story of the week is this one, courtesy of the Bulldog Reporter's Daily'Dog PR Biz Update section dated March 17th. Pardon me McDonald's for being a stickler, but putting pictures of your "users" [diners] on your burger bags doesn't meet (or meat) my standard of user generated content.

No one will dispute that you have content-generated users galore –i.e., lots of large people who got that way while eating the contents of your bags. Putting pictures of these large people brimming with your content doesn't qualify their contribution to your marketing effort as user-generated content.

From the Daily'Dog item: The move by the world's biggest restaurant chain to feature customers on its packaging is the latest proof of the importance marketers are placing on user-generated content like the homemade videos and blogs that rule the Internet… "People are really interested in reality," McDonald's chief marketing officer Mary Dillon told Reuters, pointing to the rise in popularity of reality television shows. "It's about real people connecting with our brand."

Real user-generated content would, for example, be bag notes from real eaters explaining why they continue a practice that some would submit has a direct correlation to their disproportionate girth or which spotlights their amusing answers to questions like:

What does "Cardio Vascular" mean?

Answer:  He's the President of New Mexico.

Look, I ate at McDonald's once. OK, a few times when I had the metabolism of the entire Roman Army. Subsequently, I have used the drive through whenever possible because it helps maintain the illusion I don't or won't look like the average users inside the place. Now if I drive through again, I'll get a bag with pictures of real users working on ingesting more content. Are they really going to put pictures of their average eaters like me on their bags?

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