Fast food advertising is famous for the discrepancies between what the food looks like in the ad, and what it looks like in real-life.
McDonald's Canada has released a video on YouTube that takes you behind the scenes of a typical photo shoot for one of its advertisements—detailing exactly what McDonald's does to make its burgers look so much better than they do in stores.
It was an unexpectedly transparent response to a customer who asked, "Why does your food look different in the advertising than what is in the store?"
A regular Quarter Pounder takes about a minute to make in-store, but one of McDonald's photo shoots takes a couple hours.
All the ingredients they use are exactly the same as the ones used in stores — patties, buns, ketchup, mustard and all.
They want to show all the elements of the burger in one picture, so it's built specifically so that viewers can see everything. In a McDonald's store, workers would just pile it on in a straight stack.
The top bun sits crooked because everything between the buns has been pushed up to the front.
They melt the cheese a bit and sculpt it with a palette knife to make it look more attractive.
Here they are trying to figure out which spots to put the ketchup and mustard.
The condiments are applied delicately with a syringe.
This is what the burger looks like when the food stylist is done with it, but it still has to get a touch-up from an imaging specialist.
They don't retouch it too much so that it still looks convincing and appetizing.
One thing they do is remove some of the little accents that pop up on the bun.
They also enhance the color all over the burger.
And make sure that everything — like the cheese — is lined up appropriately.
There's an obvious size difference between the store burger (left) and the ad burger (right).
Here's the end comparison between the two.
Now see more comparisons
Look At The Shocking Difference Between Fast Food Ads And The Real Thing >
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