McDonald’s tells Indian youth to ditch the smartphone and live real life
McDonald’s is running a campaign that encourages people in India to put down their mobile devices and spend more time with their families and friends – preferably in its restaurants, enjoying its new Sharing Packs.
A film, created by Leo Burnett, features young people who place their smartphones face down and spend more time offline.
The campaign carries the hashtag #KuchPalOffline, which means spend more time offline.
Kedar Teny, director of marketing and digital for McDonald’s West and South India, said: “With internet enabled smart-phones in our hands, it is a fact that most of us are distracted. Our new campaign takes this simple insight and urges people to take a small break from the online world to share happy moments in the real world.”
“Simply put we want to start a conversation and a movement amongst our customers by nudging them to go #KuchPalOffline with a simple act of “flip to share” rather than “click to share”,” he said.
Credits:
Client: McDonald’s India
Kedar Teny, Director, Marketing and Digital, McDonald’s (West and South)
Agency: Leo Burnett
Chief Creative Officer: Raj Deepak Das
ECDs: Sachin Kamble and Prajato Guha Thakurta
Creative: Sujit Sawant, Qainat Mansoor, Manas Keer, Vaibhav Patil, Siddharth Kalro
Planning: Hitesh Mehta (Vice President), Divya Agrawal
Account Management: Abhishek Jha (Brand Partner), Supriya Bhasin (Brand Director), Sayantan Bhattacharya, Aditya Atre, Pratik Adhikari
Production House: Bubblewrap Films
Director: Suresh Triveni
Producer: Ketaki Guhagarkar
Replace McDonald’s with any other brand here and it’s still equally (ir)relevant:
Ditch the smartphone and meet your friends at Starbucks.
Ditch the smartphone and play Scrabble with friends.
Ditch the smartphone and go trekking with Nature Valley Granola Bars.
Ditch the smartphone and share a few cans of Carlsberg with friends.
Ditch the smartphone and have a break with Kit Kat.
Picking a random purpose and attaching a random brand to it seems to be a trend in Indian advertising over the past few months. A stammerer becomes a successful standup comedian and it’s somehow related to a coffee brand. A blind man becomes a photographer and this is somehow related to a soap brand. A wife who’s the boss of her husband at work gets home and cooks for her husband and this is somehow related to a telco.
I understand the whole point about brands standing for a higher purpose. But when a higher purpose is so generic that you can replace the brand with just about any other brand in any other category, something is wrong.
ReplyAny brand can say ditch the smartphone for quality time and communication with loved ones…the first one to do it was Orange many years ago before all the ‘tards started copying them. That was revolutionary because they were selling mobile airtime and to tell people to get some balance in their lives by not using their mobiles all the time was brave and inspired.
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