McDonald's New Ad Splits Twitter: Is It Heartwarming or Tacky?

A new television ad for McDonald’s has sparked an online debate about whether the fast-food chain’s latest marketing effort is in bad taste.

The ad features McDonald’s signs from over the years, commemorating a wide variety of events, ranging from wedding anniversaries and birth announcements to national tragedies such as 9/11 and the Boston Marathon bombing.

Some people, including Tim Calkins, marketing professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, lauded the ad as heartwarming, CNN reported.

Steve McKee, president of McKee Wallwork + Company Advertising in Albuquerque, told CNN: "I thought the ad was awesome. It's clear that all the billboards were real. It was demonstrating that McDonald's is Americana."

But some people think it’s tacky.

My two cents on the controversial McDonald’s ad: it’s in poor taste. I hope they pull it.

— JD (@AllAboutTheDash) January 13, 2015

McDonald's USA chief marketing officer Deborah Wahl said the ad was intended to reflect the company's history in communities, through good times and bad, and that the company is surprised by the negative attention the ad has gotten, The Associated Press reported.

Twitter users had mixed reactions to the ad.

So the message of that commercial is "there's always a McDonald's near a disaster"?

— Alex Baze (@bazecraze) January 12, 2015

Maybe instead of making that horrifyingly cynical #GoldenGlobes commercial, McDonald's could pay employees a living wage? #ImNotLovingIt

— Eugene Mirman (@EugeneMirman) January 12, 2015

Hey guys, sorry. I’m gonna be busy for the next 25 minutes thinking about that McDonald’s commercial and the meaning of life. #GoldenGlobes

— Jenna Kim Jones (@jennakimjones) January 12, 2015

It is pretty insanely generous of McDonald's to change the words on the sign sometimes. Bless them for their service.

— Sean Thomason (@TheThomason) January 12, 2015

feel like the mcdonald’s ad is a great concept that a lot of us could have executed better with imovie and three hours

— Jon Bois (@jon_bois) January 12, 2015

I really feel we can all come together as a country over how offensively manipulative and cynical that McDonald's ad is.

— Erika Hall (@mulegirl) January 11, 2015

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