
A machine will serve you a free Big Mac - prostoalex
https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2017/01/25/this-machine-will-serve-you-free-big-mac/otKImEE5HZHmZbHWdd7qyL/story.html
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ChuckMcM
"Growth Marketing" at its finest. The quick summary is that if you give the
machine access to your Twitter account so that it can tweet out an
advertisement "from you" it will dispense you a pre-made burger. No doubt its
one per twitter handle so be sure and have a bunch of pre-made handles ready
for it.

As with most things, such systems are equal parts clever and stupid. The
gamers in the crowd will get free burgers with day old twitter accounts that
have specious handles like @NeverBelieveMyTweets or @ShillingForTheMan etc.
This will cause McDonald's to hastily try to push updates to the software to
check the ages of accounts, handles with bad words in them, etc. And of course
it is "working around" a number of FTC regulations on implicit advertising in
exchange for free merchandise (those tweets better include a disclaimer!) and
the cash starved company (Twitter) itself is not seeing "advertising" or
"promoting" revenue (it would be _really_ interesting if the BigMac machine
tries to use your account to promote its own tweet from your account).

So once again we have a "brilliant" idea where if it is only used in exactly
the way they want it to be used, would be brilliant, but is so easily
exploitable that such use will likely be overwhelmed by mischief resulting in
a much more costly campaign.

~~~
blacksmythe

      >> The gamers in the crowd will get free burgers with day old twitter accounts
    

(aged) Twitter accounts appear to be pretty inexpensive:

    
    
          http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-twitter-hacker-20160609-snap-story.html
    
    
        "The hacker... is asking 10 bitcoin, or just under $6,000, 
        for what he or she claims are the log-in credentials 
        for 379 million Twitter accounts."

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synicalx
Garbage like this is why I have never and probably will never do anything with
my advertising qualification. There's nothing creative about this, the
outcomes it produces are of no benefit (people will just ignore shill tweets),
and it probably only exists to create a bit of short term "buzz" around the
McDonalds brand.

The cynicism and disdain for consumers that it took to make something like
this is almost sickening.

~~~
majewsky
If people "just ignore shill tweets", then why does McD give you a free burger
in exchange for a shill tweet?

~~~
synicalx
Probably because some ad agency told them it was a good idea. And also because
the tweets aren't really the point of this campaign - they just want to make
headlines and keep the brand name in the back of people's minds.

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astrodust
To view the article you need to "sign up" to their site for some bullshit
reason. To get your "free" burger you likewise have to shill for the company.

What a world we've created.

~~~
huangc10
I'll tell you what my previous manager use to say: "There is no such thing as
a free lunch".

~~~
YZF
This saying is probably equivalent to the efficient market hypothesis ;) I
prescribe to the point of view that while on average there are no free lunches
you can still get a free lunch here and there.

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city41
The article touches upon automation, but doesn't make clear how the Big Macs
are made. I'm assuming they are made as usual then placed in the machine.

So there isn't too much of interest here. This is really a marketing campaign
and not progress on automation.

~~~
azdle
The article does mention it:

> And even the newest technology often requires some degree of human
> interaction. For instance, burgers may pop out of the Boston McDonald’s
> machine unassisted next week, but they’ll be loaded into it by actual
> people. For now, at least.

So, yeah, nothing actually interesting here, just a marketing stunt.

~~~
city41
Ah thanks, I missed that.

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SurrealSoul
I hope one day we will all pay for everything by selling our friends
advertisements

~~~
LesZedCB
It's a pretty crazy indication of the world we live in that it's affordable to
give away free food as advertising for that very restaurant.

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joeyspn
Ever since I discovered the last ingredient to reverse engineer the Big Mac,
(the magic sauce [0]), I haven't returned to a McDonald's...

Now, from time to time, I just do "Big Mac parties" with friends and family,
and with €12 ($13) I can get the ingredients for 5 homemade "McMenus"... You
can't beat that even with all the automation of the world. xD

[0]
[http://www.tesco.com/groceries/product/details/?id=292462714](http://www.tesco.com/groceries/product/details/?id=292462714)

------
huangc10
Talked about Big Macs yesterday with co-workers (yes, of course we work in an
open-space office...). Wanted to share this video of McDonalds Exec Chef Dan
Coudreaut making a Big Mac:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcu4Bj3xEyI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcu4Bj3xEyI)

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Neliquat
0wned for the cost of a big mac. Brilliant.

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will_pseudonym
"The machine, Spadea said, is being used primarily as a marketing tool, not
the first step toward employee-less McDonald’s restaurants."

lol

~~~
stephengillie
Employee-less retail locations do not currently make economic sense. For the
near to moderate future, every business will keep at least 1-2 employees per
location, mostly to handle extreme edge cases like flooding, cars being driven
into the building, or hostage situations. And that's in addition to the jobs
that are still to complex or performed too rarely to automate.

Also, some humans are always going to want to talk to a human - maybe to
express praise or dissatisfaction with something trivial about their visit,
and receive a Hawthorne effect-like reward[1] - and so the human becomes a
"human interface device" part of the machine.

Remember how self-check registers were supposed to replace grocery store
checkers? It's been over a decade, and stores still pay people to wave food
over a red light.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect)

~~~
GFischer
While I agree with your statement as-is ( _Employee-less retail locations do
not currently make economic sense "_), I do believe we'll see a dramatic
reduction in employment in commodity retail locations (anything that sells
upscale or non-essentials will retain humans).

Many large companies are trying very hard, and tech is basically here, see for
example:

[https://www.amazon.com/b?node=16008589011](https://www.amazon.com/b?node=16008589011)

Self-check is getting a lot better too (I don't understand why it's getting
delayed).

I also believe that employee arbitrage is an opportunity (serving high-cost
areas from low-cost areas, and improving employee usage and efficiency), and
I'm going to personally invest in building tech to enable that.

~~~
stephengillie
It's an interesting idea. I have a lot of questions around Loss Prevention -
how do they address shoplifting, on-premises consumption, destruction of
merchandise, and other retail issues Amazon hasn't faced before.

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chickenfries
Am I supposed to authenticate my Twitter account on this thing? No thanks.

Also, really sucks that the homeless will be left out of this giveaway.

~~~
stephengillie
Where does the article say homeless people are excluded?

~~~
riebschlager
Surprisingly few homeless people are on Twitter.

~~~
jpindar
Not so. Where do you get the idea the homeless people don't have phones? Also,
you obviously don't go to many public libraries.

