When the US Wins, You Win!

July 26, 2024 1:47 PM

As the 2024 Paris Olympics opens (with sabotage by unknown actors), it's time to look back at one of the biggest marketing missteps of the Olympics - the McDonald's "When the US Wins, You Win" campaign of the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics.

The premise was simple:

• Get a card with an event on it
• If the US won a medal - you get a free food prize:
  • Gold: A Big Mac
  • Silver: French Fries
  • Bronze: A Coke

With the boycott of the Soviet Bloc from the games, the US won 174 medals. That was a lot of Big Macs.

Despite the obvious cost to McD's, they ran the promotion again in 1988 and 1996.

Of course, The Simpsons had something to say about the promotion

posted by drewbage1847 (25 comments total)

For the record, I grew up dirt poor with a McDonald's at the end of our street that we would only rarely eat at as a treat. The summer of '84, at the age of 10, I housed so, so many burgers. Might have been my favorite Olympics ever! :)
posted by drewbage1847 at 1:52 PM on July 26 [42 favorites]

That Simpson's clip was the first thing I thought of! I'm Canadian so didn't enjoy the free burgers you Americans did.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:54 PM on July 26 [2 favorites]

Yayyy dad has been kidnapped by the IOC! Let us dance and gesticulate with our fast food items!
posted by credulous at 2:46 PM on July 26 [1 favorite]

WHAT AN OPENING!

Zowie! (and Celine! 😭)
posted by mazola at 2:56 PM on July 26 [6 favorites]

I was in college when this happened. One of the people in my friends group worked at McDonalds and made off with a couple boxes before the games started, and then during/after the games we went through and made collections of winning cards. Even as starving college students we grew sick of McD's before the promotion ended and would just walk down the street handing out cards.
posted by Runes at 3:24 PM on July 26 [7 favorites]

Metal internet is freaking about Gojira. So good.
posted by misterpatrick at 3:28 PM on July 26 [5 favorites]

That was bonkers. And wonderful. So many weird, incredible small moments as well as the huge name ones (Lady Gaga, Aya Nakamura in duo with the Garde républicaine (massive f-off to the far right there, background), Gojira, Zidane passing the flame to Nadal, Celine Dion's comeback performance on a stage halfway up the Eiffel Tower!!!!)

The catwalk dance / drag-show / Eurodance / disco megamix was not just proud but triumphant.

The slow-mo silver mecha-horse galloping down the Seine was jaw dropping.

And the final lighting of the balloon-flame was just sublime choreography, with the build up of the flame passing to different French o/para/lympians. At the end, the penultimate torch bearer was Charles Coste, age 100, gold medalist in 1948, who lit the torches of 2 Guadaloupéens, Teddy Riner and Marie-José Perec, who had the final honour.

It could very easily have been great through just leaning on history and cliché, but in the end it was so much more. Just an amazing, overwhelming set of symbols and messages about past, modern and future France to throw out to the world.
posted by protorp at 3:51 PM on July 26 [16 favorites]

Meanwhile, setup for the new surfing event has done major damage to coral reefs around Tahiti; the event itself is expected to do still more damage.
posted by adrienneleigh at 4:48 PM on July 26 [4 favorites]

That was really fuckin' French.
posted by dry white toast at 4:53 PM on July 26 [5 favorites]

I had the opening ceremony on while I finished up my Friday afternoon work, and liked it enough that I'm rewatching as Friday evening background viewing. Very spectacular, just the right amount of wtf

*US viewer filter, sorry* Sigh, NBC why is Peyton Manning involved in your broadcast team?
posted by the primroses were over at 4:57 PM on July 26 [4 favorites]

"Coming up next, an hour-long episode of Mama's Family."

Sorry, late to the party.
posted by non canadian guy at 7:12 PM on July 26 [4 favorites]

Meanwhile, setup for the new surfing event has done major damage to coral reefs around Tahiti

Jesus, so unnecessary for a 3-day event:

Instead of using the 20 year long-standing wooden judges tower that’s already established on the reef, Olympic organizers greenlit an almost $5m state of the art aluminum structure to replace it...

Ma’ohi pro surfer Lorenzo Avvenenti told The Guardian: “I saw their motors just blasting the coral reef and breaking everything, and breaking their propeller at the same time. That was the biggest destruction of the reef I’ve seen in my life. Especially in a sacred place like Teahupo’o, which is so raw and so untouched.”
posted by mediareport at 6:07 AM on July 27 [2 favorites]

We were in Paris recently and my kids loved the place -- but they just didn't recognize a lot of the symbology of the opening ceremony. I was doing the kind of commentary that, frankly, the broadcast team should have been doing.

Knowing that France is so, well, French, I wish that NBC would have prepared a commentary track for Alternate Audio or Closed Captions or something to explain all the references and subtexts.
posted by wenestvedt at 9:43 AM on July 27 [4 favorites]

That horse was sweet tho.
posted by wenestvedt at 9:43 AM on July 27 [1 favorite]

To be fair the French broadcasting team were often struggling to keep up (bar the one guest who was part of the art direction management) as a lot of elements seem to have been kept completely secret beforehand. Can only imagine what some of the live commentators around the world were having to improv to fill the shifts in tone.

A good rundown here of French and some international press reaction, with a particularly nice quote at the end:

The author and translator Bérengère Viennot had the final word. “This ceremony married classical and popular culture, atrocious taste and High History, wokeism and unchecked humour, technical prowess and the genius of Piaf – and has succeeded in provoking a terrific argument,” she said. “It’s a perfect allegory of the French spirit.”
posted by protorp at 10:46 AM on July 27 [6 favorites]

And Christians are up in arms about what they felt was the mocking of the Last Supper amongst other things
posted by drewbage1847 at 11:50 AM on July 27 [1 favorite]

As a Christian, I say: good! Don't take your dogma too seriously.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:15 PM on July 27 [1 favorite]

Who was the masked traceur torchbearer though? I am still waiting for the big reveal!
posted by goo at 3:42 PM on July 27 [1 favorite]

I strongly believe that McD's promotion got me interested in the Olympics as a kid and I actually kind of miss how it made me root for athletes in sports I'd never ever watch.
posted by thorny at 3:43 PM on July 27 [1 favorite]

Ok if you haven't seen the opening ceremony yet and you are in the US, skip NBC, go get a VPN and watch it on the BBC iplayer! The UK commentators are so much better. I have purchased a Peacock subscription for the month because, sadly, the bbc doesn't have full rights to all the events and there are some I don't want to miss. But the commentators are soooo much better on the British coverage than in the US.

The two BBC presenters covering the opening ceremony must have been prepping for months in advance. They had interesting sporting and/or cultural facts on every single damn country that went by. Plus they were explaining all the cultural references from the different acts in the ceremony. And then - I kid you not - simultaneously translating the speeches from French (in a Scottish accent). <3 <3 <3

NBC is an embarrassment.
posted by EllaEm at 3:55 PM on July 27 [4 favorites]

I love Kelly Clarkson, and Mike Tirico is a total professional, but I often forgot about then because they were silent for minutes at a time.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:58 PM on July 27

In 393 CE, Emperor Theodosius I banned the Greek Olympics due to their pagan religious element .. which [he felt] had no place in his Christian empire.

In particular, paganisms slightly more "live and let live" attitiude towards other religions fit his empire's war machine less well than a jelous sun god religion from the dessert, including the peaceful competition aspect of the Olympics.

We should accentuate this pagan religious element whenever possible.
posted by jeffburdges at 8:28 AM on July 28 [1 favorite]

The two BBC presenters covering the opening ceremony must have been prepping for months in advance. They had interesting sporting and/or cultural facts on every single damn country that went by. Plus they were explaining all the cultural references from the different acts in the ceremony. And then - I kid you not - simultaneously translating the speeches from French (in a Scottish accent). <3 <3 <3

Andrew Cotter is amazing and one of our voices of sport. During lockdown he started commentating on his dogs Olive and Mabel.
posted by plonkee at 1:22 PM on July 28 [4 favorites]

Ah, I knew I recognized his voice but didn't connect him to the Olive and Mabel commentary :-) Fabulous.
posted by EllaEm at 7:10 AM on July 29

i loved the "Ça ira" adaptaion by Gojira of course. It's originally a French revolutionary song about beheading aristocrats, which they performed on la Conciergerie where the revolution imprisoned Marie Antoinette before her execution. As Gojira has many enviromental songs, they should adapt "Ça ira" into being against neoliberalism or economic growth, or even human-centrisim.
posted by jeffburdges at 8:03 AM on July 29 [4 favorites]