An Interesting Advertising Annoyance. Or is it a Technique?

An ad campaign, launched Friday, is quickly becoming an internet sensation in the few markets that it was initially introduced in to. While it has not yet debuted in the Phoenix market, if you we’re to be watching a Cleveland Cavaliers game on FSN Ohio for instance, this commercial would be played (by design, mind you) at least 10 times during that two and a half hour span. McDonald’s fillet-o-fish campaign is hooking people with it’s extremely annoying fish song

Watch it a couple more times and you’ll undoubtedly be walking around all day singing “Give me back my fillet-o-fish, give me my fish!” and McDonald’s has hooked you to their product with a remarkably simple, but remarkably effective song. If you don’t believe that this is in fact an a+ campaign, check out this article from the Boston Globe

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Boston Globe
Arnold: Its McDonald’s ad draws hits on YouTube
CHRIS REIDY
March 4, 2009

A new ad for McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish sandwich is attracting a lot of attention on Youtube.com, the video sharing website, according to Arnold Worldwide, the Boston ad agency that created the spot.

The TV spot began airing last week, and between Friday and yesterday afternoon, it received 50,000 hits on Youtube.com, an Arnold spokeswoman said.

The ad features two chaps in a garage, one of them eating a McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish. On the garage wall is a mounted fish who bursts into song to register his dismay at having to witness a human eating a fish sandwich in his presence.

“Give me back that Filet-O-Fish,” the mounted fish sings in part. “If it were you in that sandwich, you wouldn’t be laughing at all.”

Neither of the men seen in the ad speak. That’s because other versions of the ad are also being aired on Spanish-language TV stations, with the mounted fish singing in Spanish, the Arnold spokeswoman said.

One English-language version of the ad, which appears with this post, notes that the Filet-O-Fish is currently part of a $3.99 value meal that includes fries and a soft drink. This version of the ad is NOT airing in the Boston market. Plans call for versions of the ad to run for about two or three weeks.


There is, without a doubt, a very thin line being tested by Arnold and McDonald’s in this campaign; the difference between annoying a viewer enough to remember their product, and alienating customers with sensory annihilation.