Before the Super Bowl, under the radar, over the hype.

Another ad that *technically* could pass for a Super Bowl spot even though it ran just before the game. Paying homage to the classic Jordan v. Byrd battles of years past, McDonald’s updated the campaign with LeBron James and Dwight Howard. Did it hold up? Not sure. The banter between them felt more real than the old stuff, but the cgi... er, jams felt a little too anything but. If you watch enough dunk competitions, there are only so many dunks you can try. Not that Jordan’s “Over the river...” scenario was believable, but in that context, the absurdity works. Here, focusing only on dunks eventually means cgi happens and you end up looking for the fake parts vs. clever edits. So did MD’s waste the effort here? Not sure. It’s getting views, just not insanely so. When not attacking Starbucks head on, they’ve been busy going hipster/urban for some time now, and this felt like a disconnect from that.