It’s not just a bad ad, it’s a symbol of everything rotten in our lives.

Twice a week, my partner and I do a nice thing together in the morning. We leave home early and walk 10 minutes to our favourite coffee spot, where we sit on the bench outside with our coffees and watch as people walk, scoot, bike, drive and bus to work down the main road. It’s a peaceful, fun activity before a busy day, and we love to make silly little jokes about whatever’s happening on the street that morning.

Last week we were sitting outside the coffee place, enjoying our regular order, when the serenity of our morning ritual was shattered in the most obnoxious, confronting and uncomfortable manner.

It was the sexy Grimace bus.

I despise the sexy Grimace bus, particularly the fact that the adjective I must use to describe it is “sexy”.

If you are reading this in New Zealand then you are familiar with Grimace. There’s no way for you to not be familiar with the canonical McDonald’s mascot of indeterminate species. But more recently, Grimace has been plastered all over the country on bus stops, billboards and the McDonald’s app.

It’s advertising, I know this. And I know that there’s no such thing as bad publicity so by writing this article I am simply adding to the omnipresence of Grimace in Aotearoa. But I have to say something, lest the powers that be are left believing that Grimace reclining seductively and using African American slang and inexplicably not knowing how to spell is a good advertising approach.

[Here is where one would typically put a photo of the bad ads but that is simply more ads so this space has been intentionally left blank.]

Let me describe to you what we saw that fateful morning:

• A double-decker Auckland Transport bus
• Wrapped in sticker advertising (sadly common now but hoo boy are they an eyesore)
• The bus, usually dark blue, is entirely purple
• On the side of the bus is Grimace – also purple, species unknown – lying on his side, hand on hip in a classic sexy pose
• In yellow McDonald’s writing are the words “Grim is bussin'”. Bussin’ is AAVE (African American Vernacular English) meaning something is really good
• For some reason, Grimace has a thigh gap
• On the back of the bus is Grimace’s face in close up
• In yellow writing: “OhhhHh gOooOoody”

I hate it so much. It gives me the shivers every time I see it, which is often because the buses are everywhere. Yesterday I had to catch the sexy Grimace bus to get home and when I looked out the window I was observing Auckland through the perfect triangle of Grimace’s thigh gap.

The massive campaign is for the Grimace shake, a thick shake with a flavour profile allegedly as indeterminate as Grimace himself. The shake is already a viral commodity around the world, and the ad campaign would’ve worked just as well if they’d simply written “Grimace shake now available” in plain text on every bus and billboard.

Which leads to perhaps the real reason I hate the sexy Grimace bus. It is the purest example of the smoke and mirrors industry that is advertising. Every day, thousands of people are paid sooOooOo much money to come up with “Grim is bussin'” and “new whip, not mad”. Hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on a campaign for a product that has been given free advertising the world over thanks to social media. This was not a campaign that required education, information relay or brand awareness with a creative, clever delivery. It was just another product from one of the biggest fast food companies in the world that needed some ads in New Zealand. And so we get Grim is bussin’, and some nonsense misspelt text (because I guess Grimace is illiterate? Or is it because he has no fingers?) on our public transport and buildings.

McDonald’s has been on a big Grimace campaign since last year. They made him memeable, and simple-minded. He was just a weird blob happy to be there. And the internet lapped it up. Somehow Grimace became a queer icon. The purple blob mascot of a fast food company became a queer icon. I’m being radicalised as I type. (Yes, I have worn my KFC beanie in public so consider this growth on my part.)

We used to take pride in our capitalism. Brand campaigns were either beautifully executed, clever, strange or at least compelling enough to intrigue people. And when they weren’t, they just stated the obvious: “you can buy this now”. But billion-dollar companies know they don’t need to work that hard any more. It’s less about catching the eye of consumers and more about taking up as much space in people’s eyeline (and brain) as possible. So now they’re just taking the piss.

And we in the media are at least partially to blame. I might be raging against the terrible bus but media attention is all part of the game. We’ve written about ads before, positively and negatively, but until now I’ve never felt personally insulted or depressed by their lack of effort or thought. Have you ever wondered why you can read a news website and learn in a news article that Air New Zealand is having a sale? Why would brands need to bother thinking about creative and clever marketing when there’s free media like that up for grabs? We all live in the attention economy and the big companies are always winning.

Maybe you’re thinking “welcome to being older, Mad, these things aren’t for you any more, just ignore them”. It seems the kids love the Grimace shake and love the campaign. It’s the kids, after all, who know what bussin’ means. And if that’s the case, which it probably is, then the reality is even bleaker than a shit ad.

Despite New Zealand having the second-highest childhood obesity rate in the OECD, and McDonald’s likely contributing not insignificantly to that statistic, the sexy Grimace bus is not for me or any other consumer with a fully formed prefrontal cortex. It’s not for the people who maybe, though not often, can ignore the seeping rot that is advertising in their lives.

No, the sexy Grimace bus is for the children.

A depressing insult to the injury that is my ruined morning coffee.