Big Food Ad Strategies Focus On Farmers And Freshness (VIDEO)

McDonald's new ad campaign, set to debut January 2, focuses on the farmers that supply McDonald's with food. It's a different strategy than previous campaigns, designed to connect the farm with the table. In other words, if those french fries look lifeless and processed to you, fear not! Farmer Frank Martinez cares so much about those potatoes that he eats them raw.

McDonald's isn't the only large food corporation trying to change the focus of its ads. In collecting the recent ads of some of America's biggest food companies, two consistent strategies emerge: Farmers and Freshness. The companies focusing on farmers made sure to give farmers a sense of salt-of-the-earth hero worship; without these men and women, the ads suggest, the food on your plate simply wouldn't taste as good as it does. For the companies focusing on freshness, each ad linked freshness with overall taste quality, assuming the fresher and "realer" the food is, the better it will taste.

So are these ads the real deal or just some fancy jargon that ultimately means nothing? Check out our slideshow below and decide for yourself.

RATE IT!   |  

VOTE

False

True

CURRENT TOP 5 PICK YOUR OWN TOP 5

USERS WHO VOTED

NEW! CREATE YOUR OWN SLIDESHOW

Comments

[Karl Wilder]

04:29 PM on 12/21/2011

If this weren't so funny, it would be funny.

[fuzzynormal]

12:05 PM on 12/21/2011

When your product sucks, just say that it doesn't really loud...rather than make a better product.

It's the American way. We're not flawed! We're awesome! Our marketing says so!

[ConGrpThink]

11:57 AM on 12/21/2011

Yuppies should be easily fooled. They eat nasty garbage from Starbucks, after all.

[bmonaghan]

11:40 AM on 12/21/2011

In 2006 diabetes was attributed to approximately 72,500 deaths in the US and was listed as the seventh leading cause of death listed on U.S. death certificates. More importantly, diabetes (whether type 1 or 2) precipitates multi-system complications including heart disease, kidney disease, blindness, peripheral vascular disease and neuropathy.

By 2020 these numbers are expected to double.

AND YET. Diabetes is 95 % curable and preventable.

Can you name any other disease that has a ready cure and can be eradicated yet we expect to see more of it, not less? Not cancer. Not HIV. Not polio.

I think it is an outrage that our food industry is killing us and yet nothing is done. NOTHING! And why would they? The pharmaceutical industry (diabetics require lots of meds), the beef industry, the fast food industry, the food manufacturing industry... all profit by the continual marketing of false and misleading information about their foods' safety and nutritional value.

That's simply the facts.

[Mensch99]

11:15 AM on 12/21/2011

Ammonia is used in processing 70% of US ground beef. This allows offal to be added with the hope that the ammonia will kill the bacteria. It is not required to be listed as an ingredient since it is used in processing. Still, it remains in the food and it stinks.

http://www.grist.org/article/2010-01-05-cheap-food-ammonia-burgers

[Marcin A Mazurek]

11:05 AM on 12/21/2011

So wait.
Big Food advertising for farmers = hmmm.. Food Tsar?
I dunno, think of a snappy yellow-journalism name for it and sell it to Fox.

Because, you know, advertising the hopes that the food you eat is fresh is obviously a government cover-up for all the sub-par, subsidized factory farming with none of the first-hand real-life farming experience.

[srheard]

10:57 AM on 12/21/2011

We have Politifact for political rhetoric. Is there a "AdFact" to rate the truthiness of commercial advertisements? Obviously, the government only protects business these days, not consumers, so maybe we need an private sector entrapeneur to figure out a way to expose commercial falsehood for fun and profit. I'd buy stock in that!

[subdolphin]

10:49 AM on 12/21/2011

Mmmmmm, frankenfoods with lots of steroids and antibiotics.

[archarabia]

10:21 AM on 12/21/2011

I think it's common knowledge by now that most of our "food" is coming from factory farms. The happy White men in their flannel shirts and overalls are just posing for the picture. The bulk of the backs that are bent over under the sun or in the barns, tending to, harvesting, or rendering produce

[HazelPethigFan]

08:53 PM on 12/21/2011

Overalls? Seriously..do you think farmers should still wear overalls? hahahaha.. You are about 60 years in the past, arch. This is what amazes me about HPostt. This website constantly has visions that somehow extreme old fashioned farming is better than modern technology. In many cases this nostalgia is complete BS.

This isn't progressive politics..this is most definitely regressive.

[Vitasanas]

03:37 AM on 12/21/2011

Reading all these comments, confirms what we describe in the book: Eating healthy and dying obese... elucidation of an apparent paradox": People are confused!!! This confusion is created and fed by us: the 'scientists'!!!! ...read more in http://www.vitasanas.ch/index.php?id=94

[French Toast]

09:51 PM on 12/20/2011

They are wasting their dollars. No one is going to believe that they're really fresh or good quality. Try putting that money into actually making the food better and then I'll be impressed.

[stjoshy]

03:27 AM on 12/21/2011

here here. but if im going to indulge in a burger and fries its kool to know that the potatoes and beef are close to if not the best they can get.

[carrieanna]

09:22 PM on 12/20/2011

Why doesn't McDonald's want to advertise all the food scientists they have frankensteining the raw ingredients so that they will be more addictive? Or what about the guys who add allllllll that salt to all of their food? How about showing us how they make chicken nuggets????

[Theo White]

09:36 PM on 12/20/2011

Jamie Oliver showed how the nuggets were made, actually what they were made of. Better off eating lawn clippings.

[punkingale]

01:00 AM on 12/21/2011

Jamie also said that the nuggets in the U. S. weren't made the way he made them for that show.

[SicknSuffering no more]

11:33 AM on 12/21/2011

Look it up on y.ou.tube

[Theo White]

09:16 PM on 12/20/2011

Where where are the "men and women" that make this possible? All I saw was gigantic corporations. Oops, I forget. The Supreme Court has determined that corporations are people. Fortunately I get what little beef I use from a local ranch where you can see the cattle grazing on natural grass and my neighbors raise organically fed chickens on their property. OK, so I eat some mercury laced tuna.

[Freedom Rush]

07:54 PM on 12/20/2011

the saddest part of the whole big ag / farm fresh ad campaigns is that they actually work. critical thinking is not a high priority to most consumers.

[laurenproof12]

10:13 AM on 12/21/2011

So true its sad.

[heymack]

10:36 AM on 12/21/2011

Without them we would not be able to feed 7 billion people....a lot of people are ignorant to that fact.

[DocSkull]

11:35 AM on 12/21/2011

"Without them we would not be able to feed 7 billion people....­a lot of people are ignorant to that fact."

Nonsense. Small farms grow more food and produce greater profit per acre. Industrialized food only exists because it is efficient at collecting government subsidies, funding politicians to make laws which suit them, and dominating food markets. We did fine before there was high-fructose corn sugar and lunchables.

[fuzzynormal]

12:10 PM on 12/21/2011

Nope. Totally wrong. It's not just about yield.

How much nutrition are those higher yield chemical fields producing?

Therein lies the truth.

[Danny Chrononaut]

05:45 PM on 12/20/2011

LOL

McDonalds.....you so craaayzeh