Mcdonald’s Releases Photoshop Magic behind Burger Ads

McDonald’s finally revealed the cinematic secrets around an arduous process called “food-styling”, which makes burgers appear bigger, juicer and tastier in public.

The company released an insightful video, which showed how technicians, photographers and McDonald’s executives spend hours to ensure that the product should be presented with absolute precision.

A customer from Toronto visited a website created by McDonald’s, which allows all the customers to ask any type of question.

“Why does your food look different in the advertising than what is in the store?” she asked.

To answer this question, director of marketing for McDonald’s Canada, Hope Bagozzi modestly addressed the question directly in a video.

The video was uploaded on YouTube last week, and since then it has been seen for more than two million times and has become a viral hit. It was almost a 4 minute video which explains how this is done.

Bagozzi enters a local McDonald’s restaurant where she orders a Quarter Pounder with Cheese. She’s then whisked to an ad agency, where the burger is photographed alongside another Quarter Pounder with Cheese that had been prepped by agency officials, who have thoroughly deconstructed and rebuild the sandwich so that all the ingredients are noticeable.

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

The cheese is vigilantly placed with a blowtorch to get the right level of melted-ness, onion slices are placed with surgical precision and ketchup and mustard then included with the help of a syringe.

While looking at the photographs of the burger made in the restaurant and that made in the studio are placed alongside, the differences are quite obvious. Miss Bagozzi guarantees viewers that all the ingredients used for the photo were original.

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.”

Joel Yashinsky, McDonald’s Canada’s 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.”