Last month, McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski took on the Herculean task of enjoy a hamburger like a regular human. Describing the food as a “product” on a “kind of bun,” assuring the audience that he would finish the rest “for lunch,” Kempczinski took a bite of the Big Arch burger, then looked at it like a doctor’s note. As more and more videos surface of Kempczinski trying to eat his own food, a simple question comes to mind: Don’t you have clowns to do that?
Kempczinski’s video sparked a ritual of humiliation as Types of C-suite of competing fast food chains strive to show that their food is not only edible, but also enjoyable! It’s become such a sideshow for the Internet that people are searching for more videos of Kempczinski sitting alone and eating sandwiches. In one of them he appears to be attempting sleight of hand with a napkin and a bite of chicken.
On the subject of the online ecosystem, this illustrates how disconnected Kempczinski is from his audience. I’m not just talking about taxi drivers, last call drunks who need fries to stave off the next morning, or someone who simply orders a coffee to go to the bathroom. No, I’m talking about the real burger lovers of the World Wide Web. The silent royalty of YouTube, eager to scroll through each of these new menu items from the driver’s seat of their car.
Kempczinski’s configuration? A gray and discreet office. Probably his, but that doesn’t bode well how closely you have to look to make sure he hasn’t asked everyone to leave the common area. Outfit? Not much better. He looks like Tintin’s uncle. Now let’s compare it to a professional, like Joe from Joe is hungry fame.
In Joe’s Big Arch video, he shows the burger as if Xzibit just opened the garage door. Taking the Big Arch home to his lair decorated with fast food memorabilia as if it were the Batcave, but Batman targeted the wrong famous clown. He breaks down the minutiae of this sandwich’s weight, juiciness and flavor, like stock tips on cable news. He eats the Grande Arche to the sound of wedding anniversary music. He gives it a 7.0 but boy does he love eating these things.
McDonald’s is one of the most influential companies in the modern world. They were there when the Berlin Wall fell, eager to feed ’90s Russians reconstituted chicken batter. They have been an eternal fixation of American culture, ever since their extraordinary franchisees has reactionaries angry at the way they cook their fries. Their iconography, from Ronald McDonald to the golden arches, is shorthand for Adbusters types as religious symbols of greed and imperialism. They have a collectible card game.
All this to say how far has Kempczinski fallen into his own ecosystem to the point of feeling that the promotion of these sandwiches rests on his shoulders? It’s not “pink slime” raw levels, but the feeling since his beginnings as an influencer has mainly been that it was not a convincing argument. The Internet is capable of giving it a human face, to McDonald’s, to Reviewbrah, to JoeysWorldTourwith Peep. Most of us eat junk food when we are hungry. The Web has forged a new type of man whose hunger goes deeper, down to the spiritual level. They are the professionals at eating a sandwich on camera. McDonald’s bigwigs should know better than to disrespect their profession.
