The CEO of McDonald’s went viral this week for starring in one of the most awkward promos in recent memory. The premise behind this promo is extremely simple: CEO Chris Kempczinski making a direct address to the camera praising and eating their newest burger, the Big Arch. It’s very much leaning into our currently preferred markers of authenticity, especially since the lighting is so perfunctory and it all looks like it was filmed on a flip phone. The implicit message here is, “our food is so good that we don’t have to use the normal trickery to prove it to you.”
Unfortunately for everyone involved, authenticity is hard to fake, and even harder to surmount. So Kempczinski saying robotically “I love this product” ever-so-slightly failed to convince. As did his minuscule bite of the burger, and his promise to finish the rest of it off-camera. Disgust is an involuntary—and authentic—response!
Other fast food social media teams leapt into action to put together their responses. Your mileage may vary on which burger CEO got closest to being charming. The Burger King CEO takes the biggest bite and fits in some dad humour.1 A&W of all places got some (very Canadian, but still) direct hits in, though I think the phrase “Teen Sauce” shouldn’t have survived the first round of edits. The Wendy’s CEO went so far as to make the burger himself before eating it, which really ups the faux authenticity ante.
It’s mildly diverting stuff, as far as these things go, but these things can only go so far. Like, at the end of the day, it’s just a parade of rich men and the A&W CEO simulating normal guy relatability.
It’s been kind of a glitchy week for CEOs all around, it seems. Target’s woes continue apace as they keep losing all their cultural cachet and, even worse, shareholder value. They are in desperate need of a turnaround, and they’re willing to spend billions of dollars to get it. What are they unwilling to do? Well, new CEO Michael Fiddelke gave an interview with AP that accidentally laid all of that out for us.
FIDDELKE: Prove is the right word. It’s a ‘Prove it’ story. I have the benefit of a 23-year running start that has taught me so much about how retail works. I’ve gotten to see Target at its very best. I’ve gotten to see us when we are not at our very best, and that leads (to) a real clear view for me of when we’re hitting on all cylinders. It means even being candid on the stuff that I had my fingerprints on. I was COO for two years. I was CFO for some times that were great, and some times that weren’t.
So as long as I’m able to couple — and I believe I can — the benefit of that experience with clear-eyed candor about where we’re at and where we need to drive change, I like that combination.
Fiddelke’s reference to “clear-eyed candor” is meant as a substitute for actual candor, because he will go on to avoid, obfuscate, and redirect for the rest of the interview. There are quite a few examples of Target being “not at [their] very best” from the last 15 months alone, but he’s not going to be candid about any of those.
Por ejemplo, try to guess what question this is answering: I’ve been at Target 23 years. It has certainly been true in every single one of those 23 years that Target has a deep history of being a productive partner in the communities in which our 2,000 stores operate. And our roots run deep there. Companies of our scale giving 5% of our operating profits back into community. You don’t find a lot of those. And so knowing kind of core truths about who we are, our role in community, matters. Investment in team matters. Target being a place for everyone matters. The teams we build that reflect the communities that we serve, that’s true for the guests in our stores, that’s for the partners that find a place on our shelf.
Any guesses?
Yeah, the question was, “Target has taken heat for pulling back on DEI programs and now not taking a public stand against ICE crackdowns in Minneapolis. What could have been done differently?”
This whole interview is a masterclass in completely empty corporate speak that just barely has the cadence of human conversation. Everything this man says sounds like a LinkedIn post. Like, “here’s what customers being too afraid to shop in our stores for fear of detention and deportation taught me about B2B sales.” It’s a way of speaking that is completely devoid or sensitivity or accountability—or humanity, honestly. It’s more simulated authenticity.
So it makes perfect sense to me that these are the people who see AI as the wave of the future. They already don’t say anything for real, and already think that the rhythm of the thing is as good as the thing itself. They already think society is a game-able algorithm and humanity is an annoying obstacle to maximizing profit. Generative AI promises them that they are right.
Of course, “the elite and powerful don’t actually give a shit!” isn’t breaking news. This is literally how it always goes, and all of our structures—capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy—are designed to separate the powerful from the society they extract from. But its dogged predictability is a big part of why I’m so frustrated by people copping pleas for AI. The idea that it’s pragmatic to jump on board with something whose main benefit is making plunder and dehumanization easier for the powerful…when has that ever actually made sense for the people being plundered? What have we gained from giving up our mechanisms to hold anyone—politicians, corporations, each other—accountable?
Because I can definitely tell you when we’re giving up when it comes to AI. We’re giving up people’s health, since these data centers drain the water supply out of the poor Black and brown neighborhoods that corporations drop them in. We’re giving up our ecosystems’ ability to renew and replenish themselves. We’re giving up thousands of lives, since these same entities that are summarizing three-line emails for us are targeting and bombing schools in Iran. We’re giving up our rights to privacy, free assembly, and free speech, since all of these integrated AI “assistants” spy on us and sell our data and likenesses to people who would do us harm.
And, less tangibly, we are giving up our discernment. We’re accepting branding exercises like the burger CEO war as entertainment, and letting ourselves be convinced by the simulated authenticity therein. People will share a social media post saying “I’ve never heard it explained so well,” and it’s a nine-part Thread that Claude cooked up that says things like “it’s not about strength. It’s about sincerity.” The LinkedInification of public discourse is somehow so distressing and so fucking boring at the same time.
I’m just very tired of the most insidiously boring people who run everything trying to convince me that they’re just like us, and that they’re on our side, and that anything that they’re heavily invested in will help us in any way. I have been told that I’m in denial about getting “left behind” for this. But Ethan Hawke, who IS just like me and IS on my side2, put it best for me: “I am not in denial about that. I am in open rebellion.”
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