It is difficult to imagine a world without the virtually global household name, McDonald’s. Those unfamiliar with the popular fast food franchise have most likely been living under a rock for the past over half century the corporation has been operating. This multi-national corporation has been running the gamut on fast food sales since before most of today’s population was born. The McDonald’s Corporation is much more than acquainted to professional advertising. The firm has aggressively adapted to new forms of advertisement throughout the years. One such method was to employ their marketing power through the relatively new advent of the World Wide Web. Although McDonald's has employed the aid of pop-up advertisements, banner advertisements, and internet radio advertisements on sights such as google.com and pandora.com, its most detailed web identity is its home page, McDonalds.com. McDonald's website utilizes a wide array of visual and written rhetoric, as well as persuasive selling strategies, to purposefully mislead the American public into believing its products are safe and healthy.
McDonald’s website, McDonalds.com, is as sleek and aesthetically pleasing as any software or consumer computer company’s. The website is adorned with expert photographs of burgers, fries, and happy families, often smiling and looking auspiciously into the distance. The families are often portrayed running, leaping jumping, or smiling and shouting with joy. The McDonald’s logo is placed strategically throughout the site directly above their newly adapted motto “ I’m lovin’ it”. While these items may seem to serve as merely space fillers or décor, they may be interpreted as having a much deeper rhetorical value.
McDonalds.com uses the rhetorical element, pathos, to appeal to the reader/viewer's emotional appeals and feelings. Take for instance McDonald’s slogan "I'm lovin' it.” Other than the obvious correlation between the audiences reading, then literally thinking these words and subconsciously pledging their love for McDonald's, the logo demonstrates a more subtle usage of pathos. A dissection of the slogan will reveal this meaning. The first word of McDonald's slogan is “I’m, an informal contraction of I am,” for an informal restaurant. The second word is “lovin’ which is slang or shortening of the word loving.” The third word is simply “it” followed by no period, exclamation mark, or punctuation of any kind. The dissection of this motto has revealed an informal, quick, and lax slogan intended to relate to a patron whom prefers meals to be quick, informal, and not particularly fastidious. In other words, McDonald's intends to appeal to an emotionally anxious and easily bored reader.
What is the idea McDonald’s wishes to relate to the reader/viewer with their photographs of families engaged in activity and looking off into the distance, as mentioned earlier? McDonald's has employed pathos again. The families appear very active and joyous to emotionally appeal to the audience. The families are engaged in wholesome physical activities and smiling heartily. Other than inspiring joy in the reader, this visual rhetoric serves to address health concerns held by today's public. McDonald's knows and understands health concerns among America’s public are rising, and show no sign of decline. This is one reason for this display.
Another issue McDonald's wishes to address with these photos is their fairly recent media heat. Films such as the 2005 British documentary McLibel, and the 2004 documentary Super Size Me, exposed the corporation for selling sub-par meals with ingredients intentionally designed to increase body mass and addictive behavior of the consumer, leading to repeat business as well as health ailments. The content, physically fit, and active families represent the corporation’s healthy and nourishing foods, even if the foods are not healthy or nourishing in reality. Why would the portrayed families, displayed on McDonalds.com, be looking into the distance? Again, it is another clever use of the rhetorical element, pathos, intended to subtly convey emotionally that McDonald’s is a forward thinking organization, and the reader/viewer would be forward-thinking as well if he or she were to become a patron. Of course, it is a preposterous notion to believe a sandwich can cause an individual to become forward thinking but it is the goal of an advertiser to persuade potential customers to become active customers through rhetoric, and occasionally through deceptive visual imagery.
McDonalds.com also utilizes the rhetorical element, logos, when attempting to appeal to the reader/viewer's logical reasoning. It entices customers to purchase “fresh” salads that, upon further inspection of nutritional information, have been treated with a form of monosodium glutamate, as well as various preservatives. This is a ploy to prey on the reader’s logic with deceptive phrasing. Although the true nutritional information is available on McDonalds.com (another instance of logos), it is not readily displayed. Nor is it ever displayed near the food photography, and it is overshadowed with key terms such as "fresh" as aforementioned.
McDonalds.com also utilizes the rhetorical element, ethos. By showcasing its culinary expertise with its head development chef, Dan Coudreaut, McDonald's is trying to convey competence in its field of business, foodservice. In his featured article on mcdonalds.com, We Dish With Chef Dan, McDonald’s Executive Chef and Director of Culinary Innovation, Chef Dan Coudreaut discusses his culinary background and ideas for future food product innovations, appearing to be an authority on the topic of foodservice. (1) Ethos is used again in the sites "our company" section. There is a veritable abundance of information regarding the executives of the firm. The executives are touted as having incredible business knowhow and various educational degrees, again appearing authoritarian in their fields.
McDonald’s overall claim for this site is it deserves the viewer/reader’s business, because they are a good, commonplace, humble restaurant with good food, and good values. McDonald’s website does contain a few logical fallacies. When describing burgers and salads, terms such as "fresh," “one-of-a-kind," and “perfect” are used. These terms are all examples of begging the question. These are opinions that are open to question and interpretation, being treated as facts. The photos of happy families cavorting about are an example of a red herring logical fallacy. These random families have absolutely nothing to do with McDonald's food, and therefore are intended to distract the audience from the actual analysis of it. Perhaps, if the portrayed families were holding or eating McDonald's products, the visual rhetoric could have been more effective. The photos of these families also create the fallacy of appealing to false or irrelevant authority, as they are not said to be actual patrons of McDonald’s, only models.
McDonald's is a highly professional organization employing many experienced marketers, each of which works carefully to persuade readers/viewers to buy from McDonald's. McDonald's has developed a website that generally relies on emotional appeal, or pathos, and bold, bright, visual rhetoric. This theme has created an atmosphere, which aids to distract the audience from key social issues surrounding McDonald’s, and helps convince them to purchase from McDonald's in the future.
