Stop and smell the advertising

Not much time to post, but something worth noting caught my attention in this weekend's Kansas City Star. McDonald's hit a home run yesterday with its scratch-and-sniff newspaper insert promoting its new "premium roast" coffee. The fast food giant has advertised, promoted and talked its new coffee to death lately. I see little coupons everywhere. The ad promoted "free Mondays" in the KC area. However, all the advertising in the world - up to Sunday's - didn't help McDonald's communicate the most important thing:
The premium roast actually IS better than the swill they used to pour (we've all had it...hungover or in dire need of a cross-country perk).

Plus, they had to do this without relying on people coming in to physically try the coffee. Enter scratch and sniff coffee ad. It smells pretty good. And I'm a coffee snob. Scratch and sniff is nothing new, and often is used frivolously (think goatee'd creative shouting "we'll make it smellable!"). But this was the perfect execution for McDonald's needs. The Sunday morning paper insert was a spot-on vehicle to get into the target's world at the right time.

I'm sure there's crow in my teeth for saying this, but, nice work McD's.

Listening to - Guster, Keep it Together.