How Hollywood's Funny Girl Next Door Is Subtly Selling The Golden Arches
Mindy Kaling can do everything. She's an actor, writer, director, comedian and more, and now she can add spokesperson to the list. In a new ad campaign from McDonald's, Kaling manages to market McDonald's without saying the brand's name once.
By her clothing, color scheme, and Google search suggestions, however, it's not very hard to infer.
In this blog, Hollywood Branded looks at how McDonald's is using Mindy Kaling as their new spokesperson to open the doors to a new audience.
How McDonalds Is Using Mindy To Market To A New Audience
It's no secret our world revolves around smart phones, social media, and the internet. And McDonald's uses this to their advantage in this new campaign, using the lovable Mindy Kaling to do so. In her ads, Mindy urges viewers to Google the place "where Coke tastes soooooo good."
Turns out, there's a huge pop culture notion that Coke just tastes better at McDonald's and if you Google like Mindy tells you to, you'll find that out pretty fast. And guess what? Those Cokes are now going to be only $1 at the fast food chain.
In other ads, Mindy talks with a beverage technician about exactly why the Coke tastes better there, using black bars to bleep out the chain's name.
There are many more like these, and this is just the beginning of the campaign. And McDonald's is not mentioned by name one single time. However, it's not hard to see where Mindy is directing us.
What This Means For McDonald's Branding
This is McDonald's first "unbranded marketing campaign" according to a statement they released to CNBC, and they are going after the market of fans who use their phones to Google the answers to questions they have while watching TV or to find out more about something they see.
Hopefully it will be more successful for them than Burger King's Google Home ad... which was targeting the same demo.
This campaign, which also includes Kaling's social media plays off the actress's own love for the chain, which she expressed often even before becoming their celebrity spokesperson. On her Twitter, she gets pretty excited about it.
And McDonald's isn't the only one using a celebrity boost to sell speedy burgers and fries. Earlier this year, Burger King used Napoleon Dynamite and his friend Pedro to advertise their own chain.
Needless to say, McDonald's is changing their marketing strategy completely, going after a new audience and using the power of unbranding and celebrities to do so.
Could Your Brand Use A Celebrity Boost?
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