Marketing Mistake: McDonalds' Sexist Burger

Mcdonalds Sexist Sausage and Bacon Sandwich

Whenever you advertise sex-typed products you need to consider how it will be viewed by both sexes. By suggesting a product should only be used by one gender you are naturally inviting backlash from the excluded sex. Now, this is obviously not the problem when it comes to products which are biologically designed for one gender e.g tampons. However, when it comes to food it's very hard to determine which sex should be eating what. In today's enlightened society, a persons biological gender does not wholly determine whether they will exhibit sex-typed traits. In other words, people do not always conform to the behaviour, or possess the characteristics typically associate with their sex.

Mcdonalds seem to believe that eating a sausage and bacon sandwich is something reserved only for the male population, and is a symbol of their "maniliness". So if we go along with this false logic and say that women don't like eating bacon or sausage sandwiches (sorry ladies), why would Mcdonalds present the sandwich so "effeminately"? In the photo the sandwich is very neatly presented with each layer of filling clearly visible . This is far from the "manly" image you would expect to see of a burger that Mcdonalds claim is a right of passage for any human possessing a Y chromosome! I think there must have been a bit of miscommunication between the concept team and the visual department (or maybe visual team were playing a joke on their backward thinking co-workers!). But not only have Mcydees ignored the fact that females also enjoy a nice fry up on the weekend and have made an odd image choice, the print advert is rather offensive too!

Left is a picture of the Mcdonalds advert whereby they poke fun at the male commuter for engaging in "female" pass times. Here we have "Looked at the horoscopes this morning? Reclaim your manliness". I have also seen one which castrates men for reading the gossip columns. Now as a man I am slightly offended by these remarks. I personally don't read the horscopes, but on the train I will often glance over the guilty pleasures column. As the title of the section illustrates, it is fun to read about what crazy antics the celebs are getting up too, and reading it I for one feel no less manly.What Mcdonalds seem to be forgetting is that masculinity and femininity are not biological characteristics. 

Today, what it means to be a man or a woman is in a constant state of flux, for example, metrosexual males.  I think Mcdonalds made a mistake with this advert and I even think that the team behind it weren't able to agree on the concept based on the photo's mix message. Going forward maybe the golden arches should just say "Hey, here's a new burger", and avoid trying to give a burger a gender!