Following the “success” of several social media campaigns that had fans begging corporations to bring back discontinued products, McDonald’s got in on the action in the United Kingdom by announcing the return of the McRib after 12 years. However, just as McDonald’s gives the sort-of-gross McRib, McDonald’s is taking it away, because the promotion will end on February 3. What will be interesting, though, is if an ad campaign from the National Health Service will have had any effect on the sales of the McRib, not because the NHS targeted McDonald’s but because of an anti-smoking billboard that showed up next to at least two McRib billboards.
The above boards showed up on Reddit earlier this month, and in case you’re trying too hard to look away from it, the board on the left is the McDonald’s ad for the McRib, while the board on the right is the NHS’s ad that proclaims: “Every cigarette rots you from the inside out.” That message is accompanied by rotting human flesh, and the two images look similar enough that people noticed. Here’s a similar ad placement in another location:
https://twitter.com/johnshevlin/status/554227430903525378
Honestly, I don’t even care about the food, as much as I’m relieved that the US isn’t the only country that tries to disgust people with anti-smoking ads. In fact, now I’m curious to know if the voice boxes in the UK’s awful TV commercials have cool accents.