How McDonald’s uses photo shop to touch up their menu burgers

The subsequent tell-all video has, however, become a viral hit, having been
viewed almost 400,000 thousand times since it was uploaded on YouTube
earlier this week.

The video was posted after a young customer asked “Why does your food
look different in the advertising than what is in the store?”

In response to the question from “Isabel M”, from Toronto, Hope Bagozzi,
McDonald’s Canada’s director of marketing, proceeds over the following
three-and-half minutes to explain how this is done.

She first visits a local McDonald’s restaurant where she buys a Quarter
Pounder with Cheese before she bring it back to one of the company’s trusted
creative agencies.

it is part of a drive to increase transperency at the fast food giant
(Picture: GETTY IMAGES)

It is then photographed alongside another Quarter Pounder with Cheese that had
been prepped by agency officials, who have painstakingly deconstructed and
rebuild the sandwich so that all the ingredients are visible.

While a burger bought in-store is made in about minute, the burger used in a
photo shoot is constructed by a team of food stylists and photographers.

The cheese is carefully blasted with a blowtorch to achieve the right level of
melted-ness, onion slices are positioned with surgical precision and ketchup
and mustard then added using a syringe.

The image is then retouched to “finesse the product” with the sesame
seeds repositioned on top and any errant crumbs removed.

Once photographed, the picture of the burger is tweaked digitally, with other
blemishes airbrushed out in a similar way to a fashion shoot.

When the photographs of the burger made in the restaurant and that made in the
studio are placed side-by-side, the differences are striking. Miss Bagozzi
assures viewers that all the ingredients used for the photo were real.

She added: “That burger [made in a normal McDonald’s] was made in about a
minute or so. The process we go through on the average shoot takes several
hours.

“I think that it’s important to note that all the ingredients are the exact
same ingredients that we use in the restaurant.

“So it is the exact same patty, it’s the exact same ketchup, mustard and
onions, and same buns.”

She added that the photo shoot burger looks bigger than those bought in-store
because steam generated from a newly-made burger when put in the box
compresses the product.

She said: “The boxes that our burgers come in keep the sandwiches warm which
creates a bit of a steam and it does make the bun contract.”

A McDonald’s food stylist added: “This way we can at least tell people you
have ketchup, you have mustard, you have two pieces of cheese and you know
what you’re getting.”

The video is part of a global campaign aimed at overhauling its poor
transparency image. It has, however, previously backfired.

Earlier this year American executives attempted to harness the powers of
Twitter by asking users to tell their “#McDStories”.

What transpired instead were customers and users detailing their disgust at
the food.

Joel Yashinsky, McDonald’s Canada chief marketing officer, said
earlier this month
: “We know that there are questions out
there, and that there are myths out there.

“We need to have a conversation with our customers, and social media allows us
to do that.”

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