McDonald’s Introduces the New Hamburglar

By Patrick Coffee 

This morning McDonald’s unveiled its not-quite-newest mascot on Twitter with a little help from its PR agency of record Golin.

Here’s the initial message, which went live a couple of hours ago:

Is it? Even Mashable had to add an “…uh…” before running an image of “this guy”:

HamburglarCloseUpShotTwo1_3x2

The newer, sexier Hamburglar would appear to be an attempt to both promote a new limited-time “sirloin” burger and position McD’s as a slightly more mature establishment rather than one staffed by surreal, possibly drugged-up cartoon characters.

For more evidence of the latter, the client did recently release an “artisan” (not “artisanAL”) chicken sandwich, which helped one Slate writer deal with the deep shame he felt after ordering an Egg McMuffin.

The client also created the requisite hashtag, returning to the character’s indecipherable catchphrase “robble robble.” Social media couldn’t quite make up its mind on the new guy; Gawker labeled him an “EDM-loving asshole dad” and we personally vacillated between calling him a cyber-criminal and a pro wrestler.

So far, the most common word used to describe him seems to be “creepy.”

From Tim Dickinson of Rolling Stone:

No dadbod on this dude despite his suburban house-husband day job.

Sadly, no one alerted the McRib, who obviously missed out on the reunion tour.

Finally, our nominee for the role of the new Grimace:

hodorEditor’s note: contrary to our previous headline, Leo Burnett was not directly involved in the Hamburglar’s re-emergence.

CREDITS
Client: McDonald’s
VP Marketing: Joel Yashinsky
Senior Director Marketing: Elizabeth Campbell
Director of Marketing: Leslie Truelove
US Marketing Manager: Ivonee Loza
Director of Public Relations: Molly McKenna
Communications Manager: Tyler Litchenberger
 
Agency: Golin
Executive Creative Director: Geoff McCartney
Creative Director: Mitch Delaplane
Creative Director: Heather Barnes
Associate Art Director: Vincent Patton
Associate Copywriter: Ananta Prayitno
Associate Copywriter: Brian Farrell
Senior Producer: Rainbow Partridge
Production Business Manager: Elana Werts
Executive Director: Carey Beck
Account Director: Maggie Ridley
Senior Manager, Digital: Ginny Sidell
Senior Manager, Digital: Samantha Sipe
 
Production company: Optimus
Director: Michael Chaves
Ep/Managing Director: Lisa Masseur
Executive Producer: Sarah Wien
Line Producer: Stan Sawicki
Editor: Michael Berg
Asst Editor: Luke Sloma
Senior Producer: Tracy Spera
Colorist: Jeff Greco
Audio engineer: Joel Anderson
VFX: Jim Moss and Michael Chaves
Music: Jon Ong Music

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