Swipe It or Skip It: Flavor Relocation

Somewhere in a boardroom, a McDonald's exec probably bolted upright in his chair, announcing: "We're not stealing flavors from around the world, we're relocating them!"

Cue polite laughter, a few nods and a global campaign built on what has to be one of the weakest taglines in history:

And look, I get what they were trying to do. It's a cute, tongue-in-cheek line that made their menu expansion feel edgy and maybe even a tad rebellious. But this...this is a linguistic car crash; a brand trying to sound clever and landing squarely in that uncanny valley between corporate humor and Twitter dad joke.

Why This Ad Misses the Mark

If you have to explain the joke, it's not clever. Flavour relocation sounds like something that ought to be on a customs form, not a menu. The tagline riffs on theft, which isn't exactly the association you want with your food.

Even if it's meant as a joke, it hits the wrong emotional notes. Humor that puts your product in the wrong metaphorical frame like that doesn't make people laugh, it makes them go "... huh?"

McDonalds' global tone usually works because it's universal. It's simple, friendly, familiar. This isn't that.

Copywriting Rule #1 When Writing for Food: Make People Salivate

This is an ad that's trying too hard to be intellectual when it should be sensory. Think about it:

Spice that hits like Bangkok. Sweetness that melts like Honolulu. Now sizzling under your local Golden Arches.

The human brain processes sensory words like sizzle, melts, crispy and juicy as if it's actually tasting them. It's one of those beautiful intersections of psychology and copywriting called embodied cognition. There was even a paper written about it by researchers at Emory University.

When people read sensory language, especially language around taste, texture and motion, the sensory cortex of the brain lights up as if they were actually eating, touching or moving.

As a copywriter, this is your golden ticket to creating a winning strategy. You're not just writing, you're hacking biology with the power of words.

And that translates to golden-brown conversion perfection.

McDonalds tried to sound clever when they should've aimed for craveable. That's why this ad falls flat, and why you should skip this type of headline when trying to create sensory appeal.

If you're writing about food and no one's hungry by the end, then I hate to break it to you, but your copy's undercooked.