That McDonald’s ‘Pay It With Lovin’ campaign is already backfiring
McDonald’s ran their “Pay it with Lovin” commercial campaign during the Super Bowl, claiming that between February 3rd and 14th, McDonald’s employees will be targeting random strangers and giving them the option to perform an act of kindness to pay for their meal.
However, the campaign has backfired for several people in the last couple of days.
Via Reddit’s TIFU:
As many of you might know McDonalds is doing the promotion of paying with love, I happened to be one of the lucky “winners” of this promotion. It was great a $15 Mckey’D’s food binge for free, man I couldn’t believe my luck! They said all I had to do is call a family member and tell them “I love you”.
The start of the f*ck up is calling my mother who knows that I had a breif history with depression and suicidal thoughts from high school bullies, the second f*ck up is starting the call with I love you.
She immediately started to freak out (mostly because I’m over 1000 miles away from her and the closest family is about 300 miles away from me) and was pretty scared that I was about to commit suicide. Over the course of the next 15 minutes I was on the phone reassuring her that I indeed wasn’t about to kill myself and make sure that she wasn’t on the next plane to arrive and come to visit. (Afterwards she also mentioned that it had given her a small asthma attack, but nothing her inhaler couldn’t handle.)
Overall it wasn’t the worst thing that has happened, and the McDucks manager that was helping me thought it was so funny she paid for the other guys meal I was with along with handing me a handful of free sandwich coupons because it was the best laugh she has had at this job.
This is not the only story that shows the McDonald’s campaign is backfiring. The Wall Street Journal writer, Kate Bachelder says that she was forced to dance with a complete stranger for an Egg McMuffin. Here’s her story:
If the “Pay with Lovin’ ” scenario looks touching on television, it is less so in real life. A crew member produced a heart-shaped pencil box stuffed with slips of paper, and instructed me to pick one. My fellow customers seemed to look on with pity as I drew my fate: “Ask someone to dance.” I stood there for a mortified second or two, and then the cashier mercifully suggested that we all dance together. Not wanting to be a spoilsport, I forced a smile and “raised the roof” a couple of times, as employees tried to lure cringing customers into forming some kind of conga line, asking them when they’d last been asked to dance.
At the end of the day, everyone had a good laugh, a free meal, and nobody actually died. Maybe this McDonald’s marketing campaign is a success after all?
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