Last week, McDonald’s Portugal publicly apologized for using the tagline “sundae bloody sundae” to promote their Halloween ice cream desserts. The phrase is typically used when describing Bloody Sunday, or the Bogside Massacre, in Northern Ireland in 1972 when British Soldiers fired on a group of unarmed Irish protesters and killed 14 people.

This is not the first time corporations have had to recall products and promotions because of references to Bloody Sunday, and a company as large and expansive as McDonald’s probably knew this. According to The Guardian, both Ben & Jerry’s and Nike had to formally apologize for offensive Bloody Sunday related advertisements.

McDonald’s issued a formal statement apologizing for the ad and any offense it may have caused, even though their campaign was not meant to reference the actual Bloody Sunday.

Instead, the promotion was meant to reference the song “Sunday Bloody Sunday” by U2, an Irish rock band, in 1983. As of November 2019, the song had over 40 million views on YouTube and remains in Rolling Stone’s top-five most popular U2 songs. 

Even though the ads made a reference to Bloody Sunday, it makes more sense that McDonald’s was trying to capitalize off of an immensely popular song rather than a horrific, deadly event in Northern Ireland’s history. 

Any promotion of a product that is based around the murder of any number of people is inexcusable, even if it was not the original goal of the company. In the case of McDonald’s, they should have done more research before releasing this advertising. 

It is one thing to try to draw customers’ attention by using popular song lyrics or artists, but the choice of song by McDonald’s was insensitive towards a dark time in Northern Ireland’s history. Yes, the song of choice was, and still is, very popular, but that does not make it a reasonable option for an ice cream campaign.

This question has to be raised: if McDonald’s really was referencing the song “Sunday Bloody Sunday” by U2, why did they pick this particular song and not another? There are plenty of songs not only by this artist but by others that are just as or more popular than this one that use the word Sunday in the title.

The choice of song to use in these ads does not make sense due to the fact that there are millions of songs recorded that could have been used in its place, and they would not have caused controversy. It seems unlikely that the entire advertising campaign of this product relied on the use of that one particular lyric. 

McDonald’s Portugal was wrong in its use of the “sundae bloody sundae” slogan and cannot make up for the damage it caused by simply apologizing. The promotion could have succeeded simply if the company had chosen to use a popular song that was not about a terrible event in European history. 

Photo from Pixabay