Re-routing Project
Year
2018
Digital Design
Photo retouching
Adobe Photoshop
Description
Advertisements re-routing (also known as Subversive advertising) is a mean to raise awareness of contradictions in commercial advertising by parodying existent brand advertisements, sometimes it can further be used to shed more light on various social issues.
In this project, I picked the Halloween-themed print ad launched by McDonald’s, "re-routed" its meaning in order to alert audiences to the public health crisis fuelled by fast-food consumption.
The Original
This ad was launched by McDonald's in Germany in 2016. The tagline “Zu Halloween muss Ketchup fließen” means “Ketchup (blood) has to be spilled in Halloween”.
The ultimate goal of re-routing is to create a new and inspiring meaning to the ad without altering the original too much. The moment I saw that skeleton-shaped hand, I knew I could twist it a bit to make it work in my favour—visualising the evil of junk food.
The Re-routed
I recreated all the taglines and logo in a similar fashion to make it in line with the original style, except they are all promoting the core message in a ridiculing way that fast food is killing us.
The skeleton-shaped product shot was also remade with overcooked and burnt fries to further strengthen the idea.