Because it’s EOD Friday and there’s no real news going on, here is the most befuddling campaign we’ve encountered this week. It comes to us from Canada’s Cossette and its biggest client McDonald’s, which picked this month’s Toronto Film Festival as a great venue to push its house coffee brand McCafe.
According to Marketing Mag, this work is all about promoting McD’s partnership with the Shazam app, which no longer only serves to confirm that you did indeed almost sort of enjoy a Justin Bieber song but now includes “visual recognition technology,” which is like a fancy update on QR codes that unlock exclusive content when you wave your phone in front of them.
In this case, that content is a series of fake movie trailers starring coffee beans. There’s a McCafe Cinema microsite and promoted on the sleeves of those McCafe cups at the festival, which must be unlocked with the app.
First there’s “Lawrence of Arabica” (get it?), which recreates the film’s battle scene as a bunch of coffee beans on a roll.
“The Grinding” replaces blood with Joe.
“The Good, the Bad, and the Brewed” includes all of Sergio Leone’s trademark tension and none of his tendency to refuse to properly edit his movies.
Finally, Mel Gibson’s only decent film becomes “Beanheart.”
Yes, that was bad, but we’ve always been suckers for lame puns.
Now that Swedes and Brazilians are passe, will Canadians be the new Argentinians?