Hadn’t seen this until today. Interesting. This is, I am sure, a very meticulously-planned marketing effort both to attract and retain customers and to encourage hiring. Hadn’t seen anything quite this direct from a major business before, though. Judging from the Awards page, it’s been going for seven years at least.
My wife’s a Latina. We see lots of Spanish-language advertising, etc. here in California, but I don’t recall seeing specifically-targeted ethnic outreach efforts like this. I’ll have to keep a better eye out.
Interesting their little slide show on that ad should feature the Baobab tree. It is NOT found all over Africa, IIRC the Discovery channel program which did a feature on it. It is found now only on one little island off Madagascar, where it’s main significance seems to be the unreliability of it’s schedule of producing fruit. So, it is exactly the OPPOSITE in real life of what McDonald’s claimed it to be: a symbol of strength and unity and solidarity in Africa. It affects one tribe on one little island. End of story.
McDonald’s was probably better served by the wry comparison that is attributed to Sarah Palin which goes something like this: Giving Obama credit for taking out Bin Laden is like crediting Ronald McDonald when you get an extra cheeseburger in your bag.
Maybe it’s a racist joke on the part of an ad exec working for McDonald’s.