UK Couple Pressure McDonalds To Remove Their Boat From TV Ad
from the you-sure-showed-them dept
In the continuing saga of people thinking they have a right to what other people see, a British couple has pressured McDonalds into removing their boat from its TV commercials. Adweek dug up the ad itself, which you can see below, along with a still image of the boat from the ad:
"We didn't see the advert ourselves at first, but lots of people kept saying to us: 'Oh, we saw the Badger on the McDonald's advert.' It was quite irritating, especially as we are not fond of fast food and the Badger has a beautiful galley where we cook everything from scratch. We even make our own bread," said Gloria Parsons, 63, who owns the boat with her husband Alan, 72.A radio station heard about them being upset and called McDonald's, who agreed to re-edit the commercial without the boat and issued an apology. Of course, in the end, the joke may be on the couple, as their efforts have brought a ton of attention to the original ad and just by judging from the comments on YouTube, people really like the commercial.
"Then one night we were watching something and the advert was on every break, right across about two hours of the programme. Lots of people were very excited to see the Badger on screen, but we weren't. She is very precious and very special to us, and we felt upset that this large corporation would just ride roughshod over our feelings. It wouldn't be acceptable to go into someone's garden and just take a shot of their house, so why use the Badger?
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Filed Under: advertisement, boats, property rights
Companies: mcdonalds
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This was a very carefully framed shot, with that boat intentionally used as a prop - that shot wouldn't have been the same without the boat. It was a substantial part of those three seconds of film.
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However, if the Parsons want only those people who have explcit permission to photograph their boat, they should lock it in a boathouse and never ever take it out. Likening this photo to going "into someone's garden and just take a shot of their house" is inaccurate at best. The only definite statement I can make is that it was obiviously not shot on property owned or rented by the Parsons; if it were they would've known about the photo shoot in advance and, most likely, monetarily compensated. Therefore there was no "going into the garden". As for taking a shot of the house, I'm unfamiliar with UK laws on that, but most places in the US a photographer can photograph anyone's home at any time, provided, the shot is not being taken FROM privately owned land, and any visible address numbers and people are brushed out before publicizing.
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mcdonalds wouldn't mind, would they?
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Who would make a commercial about clubbing seals?
The club seals to death club?
Got any more moronic questions?
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Don’t sell yourself short. Your questions are legitimate and not moronic only distractions from your motivation for walking past litter because you have a camera in hand. Too many people will walk past the litter because they think it’s not their problem. But you’ve got a camera in your hand which makes you better than the people who have walk past and did nothing, better than the viewer of your commercial because you’re pointing out a problem the doesn’t need to exist but for a cameraman’s narcissistic reasons, better than the company whose name is on the trash because they appeal lower income individuals whom you look down on.
As we enter the holiday season, be good for goodness’ sake. Put down the camera, pick up the litter, clean an oil covered duck and refuse to buy baby seal skins.
I believe this is the goodwill McDonald’s was going for. A message the couple felt was not worthy of the image of their boat.
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Making assumptions...
I only buy genuine Saskatchewan sealskin.
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One the one hand, the boat is out in the opened on public property. There was no trespassing involved in the taking of the photo. If I had been on that beach with a camera, I could have taken that shot, (and been rather pleased with myself. It is a beautiful shot.)
On the other hand, it is being used for commercial purposes, not private or artistic. Do private or artistic uses have to meet different standards? When do you need a model release, and when don't you?
And as someone else said, McD's would sue in a heartbeat! They already have, many times.
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Nice commercial
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No fatties.
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Uh....
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Interesting Case Study
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Re: Nice McDonalds...
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Also, there was that other guy who, in response to Supersize Me, ate only McD's in reasonable portions for the same amount of time and *lost* weight, just to prove that calorie intake was more important than food quality. (He also noted that the Supersize Me guy cheated by constantly drinking soda, even though he could have just as easily requested water or iced tea - and Coke was probably the primary cause of his weight gain)
Recently someone did the same thing with only Hostess products, showing that "unhealthy" foods don't actually cause you to be unhealthy as long as you watch how much and how often you eat. It's really a personal responsibility thing, in the end.
/obnoxiously off-topic tangent
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McDonalds won't kill you...
I enjoy a McDonalds, though I don't do it very often (maybe once a month), but McDonalds calorie count the food for you, and it is nutritionally balanced (if a bit over processed like many foods today)
Me, I put on weight easily, so I watch what I eat and train to keep fit, and I still have to miss the odd meal to keep my weight down.
It is a simple equation;
shove more calories in your mouth than your body uses = gain weight
eat less than your body uses = lose weight
Your body can only be in anabolic state (growing tissue/storing energy) or a catabolic state (using up energy/breaking down tissue) it is not static, so neither can your body weight ever truly be the same, moment to moment, day to day without YOU making adjustments to keep it there.
Eat wholefoods, foods that are not over processed that will leave you feeling hungry again in an hour, eat you veggies and your fruit, and do some sort of activity that gets your heart pumping, start small and keep at it, remember, it is consistency with diet and exercise, better to do 3 light sessions of exercise a week than a heavy session one once a month
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McDonalds won't kill you...
I enjoy a McDonalds, though I don't do it very often (maybe once a month), but McDonalds calorie count the food for you, and it is nutritionally balanced (if a bit over processed like many foods today)
Me, I put on weight easily, so I watch what I eat and train to keep fit, and I still have to miss the odd meal to keep my weight down.
It is a simple equation;
shove more calories in your mouth than your body uses = gain weight
eat less than your body uses = lose weight
Your body can only be in anabolic state (growing tissue/storing energy) or a catabolic state (using up energy/breaking down tissue) it is not static, so neither can your body weight ever truly be the same, moment to moment, day to day without YOU making adjustments to keep it there.
Eat wholefoods, foods that are not over processed that will leave you feeling hungry again in an hour, eat you veggies and your fruit, and do some sort of activity that gets your heart pumping, start small and keep at it, remember, it is consistency with diet and exercise, better to do 3 light sessions of exercise a week than a heavy session one once a month
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
McDonalds won't kill you...
I enjoy a McDonalds, though I don't do it very often (maybe once a month), but McDonalds calorie count the food for you, and it is nutritionally balanced (if a bit over processed like many foods today)
Me, I put on weight easily, so I watch what I eat and train to keep fit, and I still have to miss the odd meal to keep my weight down.
It is a simple equation;
shove more calories in your mouth than your body uses = gain weight
eat less than your body uses = lose weight
Your body can only be in anabolic state (growing tissue/storing energy) or a catabolic state (using up energy/breaking down tissue) it is not static, so neither can your body weight ever truly be the same, moment to moment, day to day without YOU making adjustments to keep it there.
Eat wholefoods, foods that are not over processed that will leave you feeling hungry again in an hour, eat you veggies and your fruit, and do some sort of activity that gets your heart pumping, start small and keep at it, remember, it is consistency with diet and exercise, better to do 3 light sessions of exercise a week than a heavy session one once a month
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We don't need more and more restrictions on what we can photograph.
It's not like they photoshopped a big M on the mast.
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Compare this ad to the current round of Gillette junk where a camera crew crashes into a dressing room cameras operating a complete lighting crew, guys changing in the background while some slack mouthed guy "interviews" people about their razor and Gillette's new one. Any change room I've been in a few of those guys would end up wearing a foot or something harder slammed into their crotch until they got the hell out of there.
Again, compare this to the creative involved with the current crop of Schick ads where something that comes into contact with the face suddenly becomes a splash of water. Never mind the couple of scenes that are sexually charged, it gets the point across creatively and without descending to the level of stupidity of the Gillette ad.
As for this woman, if the boat was beached at low tide on a public beach available for anyone to take a picture (which I'd have tried to frame the same way) of it there too bad that it got used in an ad. Any ad. It was there, in public, too bad, so sad.
And it it been in another companies ad. perhaps one she approved of, there'd have been no complaint. And just who, among the millions who saw that ad could have identified the boat until she spoke up?
It almost looks like she was looking for some free advertising by way of media who reported her claims and others for her own small business. So she got that and good on her.
Still, that she should be able to censor the media including advertising simply because she disagrees with the advertiser's products, way of conducting business is troubling given that I'm almost sure that until she kicked up the fuss I could have found that image in any stock photo collection where I bothered to look for it.
Most advertising is so bad as it is that when one comes along that's this good in terms of its creative component to get censored like this I do find it disturbing.
Of course, it's just as creative and impressive without the not all that special boat beached on the sand so perhaps the trade off hasn't been all that bad.
ttfn
John
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If it were...
Thus, if you had parked your boat somewhere that you own, lets say, your driveway maybe, or backyard, you would have something to go on.
Turns out, beaches are typically public.
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photographic freedom
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about MCdonalds
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