Two All-Beef Patties and a Hamburglar
McDonald’s “Big Mac Chant Off”, a user-generated content competition looking for the best user performance of the classic “Two all-beef patties” jingle, has found its winner and put his rap into a national TV spot, as promised. But one of the runner-up entrants got his moment in the spotlight too: for having held up a McDonald’s back in 1994.
Launched on June 16 and timed to cap the 40th anniversary celebration of the Big Mac, the contest asked users to perform their own version of the famous Big Mac ingredient rundown. Entrants could then post their performances to a dedicated contest page on the MySpace social network.
A team of professional judges winnowed the 1,000 entries received by July 16 down to five finalists. Visitors to the MySpace page were then permitted to vote for their selection from among that final five.
The winner with 47% of the 12,000 popular votes was Jason Harper, a former corporate executive from Boynton Beach FL who founded a music company. His remix of the Big Mac jingle was featured in a national TV spot for McDonald’s that launched July 31.
But the announcement of the five finalists drew at least as much attention for Tamien Bain and his hip hop-flavored submission. Bain, who has produced a rap album under the name “Baing the Locksmith”, revealed that he served 12 years in prison for holding up a Miami-area McDonald’s restaurant at gunpoint on Memorial Day 1994.
Bain was 14 at the time of the crime but was charged as an adult under strict sentencing guidelines then prevalent in Miami-Dade County. He served his full term.
Press reports quote him as saying that he told contest officials about his past involvement with McDonald’s and added that it was his prison time that turned his attention to music, leading to his contest entry. Upon his release from prison, Bain combined a career as a local rapper with visits to juvenile detention centers to advise kids to stay straight.
Bain solicited votes for his contest entry on his own MySpace profile page but came in fourth with 8% of the popular ballot.
Kent Voetberg, marketing director for McDonald’s Corp., says that Bain’s “interesting” background never posed any impediment to his contest eligibility.
“We found out about this gentleman’s history and decided that he met the requirements of the MySpace promotion,” Voetberg says. “When we found out that his history was ‘unique’ with our brand, we decided that based on the social networking component for this campaign, we wanted to be inclusive of all.”
Bain told a Miami newspaper that win or lose, his entry into the Big Mac Chant has helped him settle his debts with the fast-food chain.
“I was looking for a way to try to give back to McDonald’s,” he said. “To do something positive with them. I was able to give back to McDonald’s because of the publicity it received for the contest. I made up for the mistake I made when I was 14.”
All five finalist entries in the “Big Mac Chant-Off” are still available on the campaign’s MySpace page. Harper’s winning remix is available as a ringtone download.
Related Topics: Buzz Marketing, Promo Trends, User-Generated Content
