Just when you thought it was safe to eat at McDonald’s in peace, the fast food giant has intro­duced a revamped ver­sion of its Ham­bur­glar char­ac­ter – with a “chis­eled jaw” and “just the right amount of stub­ble,” no less – along with its lim­it­ed edi­tion Sir­loin Third Pound Burg­ers. Pub­lic (and media) opin­ion on the new Ham­bur­glar is mixed — from “hot sub­ur­ban dad” and, “Help, I have a crush on the Ham­bur­glar” to “a dad who picked the lamest cos­tume at Par­ty City” — but what do mar­keters think?

The brand has post­ed tons of social con­tent, includ­ing a want­ed ad for the new Ham­bur­glar, who, nat­u­ral­ly, then took over McDonald’s Twit­ter account with the hash­tag #Rob­bleR­ob­ble, which has since been used about 1500 times over­all, per Top­sy. And McDonald’s has been ask­ing its 2.8 mil­lion fol­low­ers for help find­ing him, with the burg­er ban­dit even hop­ping over to Snapchat when things got a lit­tle too heat­ed on Twit­ter.

Is McDon­ald’s new asset a stroke of genius or a brand mis­step? We asked a dozen mar­ket­ing experts and they’re divid­ed.

Regard­less of where they stand in the Great Ham­bur­glar Debate, many point to an aura of mys­tique sur­round­ing this new Ham­bur­glar and ask who McDon­ald’s is tar­get­ing with it, where the brand will go with it, and whether the brand will revive any of its oth­er char­ac­ters.

Their opin­ions fol­low in full.

The New Hamburglar: A Stroke Of Marketing Genius

Nic Mayne, founder and principal, Mayne Marketing

While “all press is good press” is a bit of a stretch, I think a vari­a­tion of that applies here.

Regard­less of how cheesy the cos­tume or char­ac­ter itself may be, or how awk­ward the videos are, peo­ple are talk­ing and that puts the brand in front of peo­ple.

Isn’t that what mar­ket­ing is all about?

Michael Goldrich, vice president of digital marketing and e‑commerce, Dolce Hotels

It is genius for the fol­low­ing rea­sons:

1. We are talk­ing about McDon­ald’s.
2. They’ve updat­ed a past sta­ple of the com­pa­ny. It gets peo­ple to think how else is McDon­ald’s evolv­ing. Maybe their menu also has improved and is pos­si­bly more healthy.
3. It also reflects dad and his naughty side. Stereo­typ­i­cal­ly, moms want the kids to eat healthy. Going for fast food and feed­ing kids junk food is going against mom and break­ing the healthy eat­ing rules. In essence the dad is the Ham­bur­glar in this sce­nario.

Apryl DeLancey, president, Social Age Media

I’d say it’s genius but not like­ly in the way they meant it. That is, unless they intend­ed to cre­ate a char­ac­ter that peo­ple would find hot, find creepy and debate about.

One has to won­der if they’ll roll out more “live” char­ac­ters.

It’s def­i­nite­ly an inter­est­ing change.

Brynn Winegard, principal, Winegard & Company

The new Ham­bur­glar cam­paign has peo­ple every­where won­der­ing what McDon­ald’s had in mind launch­ing this new cam­paign…

Which is what makes it effec­tive.

It’s just weird and eye­brow rais­ing enough to cut through the prover­bial clut­ter and get peo­ple talk­ing – and, of course, more impor­tant­ly – tweet­ing about it.

Today, the only mar­ket­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions worth hav­ing is mar­ket­ing that is dis­sem­i­nat­ed via word of mouth (WOM), peer-to-peer (P2P), because it allows for two crit­i­cal ingre­di­ents to infor­ma­tion trans­fer:

1. Source cred­i­bil­i­ty: You trust your friends and the peo­ple you fol­low on Twit­ter.
2. Mes­sage authen­tic­i­ty: You don’t doubt that they mean what they are say­ing about the cam­paign.

P2P WOM is the most impor­tant and indige­nous to none oth­er than the mil­len­ni­als.

Last year, 84 per­cent of peo­ple who had chil­dren in North Amer­i­ca were mil­len­ni­als – the same folks that were raised on McDon­ald’s, Ronald McDon­ald, Kids Hap­py Meals and the orig­i­nal Ham­bur­glar. These cra­dle-to-grave con­sumers might not be loy­al­ists, but they are cer­tain­ly like­ly to be head­ing back to a McDon­ald’s in the com­ing years – this time at the behest of their own chil­dren!

Mil­len­ni­als don’t wield as much eco­nom­ic pow­er as their par­ents (the Boomers), but they take dou­ble-income fam­i­lies as a must, care a lot about careers and income and know how to use mobile tech­nol­o­gy to tweet, talk and mes­sage (some­thing many of their par­ents are miss­ing).

What more impact­ful time, there­fore, for McDon­ald’s to launch a “ques­tion­able” social media cam­paign that will get this young, tech­no­log­i­cal­ly enabled, mobile-device-addict­ed gen­er­a­tion talk­ing and tweet­ing to one anoth­er…? In fact, it’s not only intel­li­gent­ly craft­ed, and we can assume designed to be such, it’s like­ly evi­dence of what we are going to see more of in the future from McDon­ald’s and any brand that is look­ing to dri­ve aware­ness and P2P WOM adver­tis­ing.

Oh, and if the social media cam­paigns raise enough eye­brows, “inter­est,” or at least inquiry to get more than the mil­len­ni­als talk­ing – more (brand) pow­er to them.

Carly Fauth, head of marketing, Money Crashers

Is this a stroke of mar­ket­ing genius? It depends upon who you ask. In the media, it’s been panned as being out­dat­ed. But, it’s received a great reac­tion on social media, espe­cial­ly amongst younger folks.

I like it – he is younger and more hip than before, and he also comes with a sto­ry cre­at­ed by McDon­ald’s that he has been a Dad liv­ing in the sub­urbs for the past 10 years or so.

It isn’t a mar­ket­ing fail. At the very least, it’s got peo­ple talk­ing about McDon­ald’s more.

It goes back to the mar­ket­ing adage that any press is good press. Sales have fall­en rather sig­nif­i­cant­ly for McDon­ald’s recent­ly, espe­cial­ly in the younger demo­graph­ic. Any­thing it can do to get folks to talk more about their busi­ness is a shrewd move.

Bill Fish, president, ReputationManagement.com

The new Ham­bur­glar is com­plete genius. I love read­ing about it, peo­ple find him creepy, peo­ple say it reminds them of “50 Shades of Grey”, peo­ple won­der who in the world McDon­ald’s is mar­ket­ing to with this char­ac­ter?

What is so great thus far is how vague every­thing is. The short videos released on Twit­ter are just bizarre, tak­ing calls from his wife while hid­ing out at McDon­ald’s?

What I real­ly hope is that they let it play out for a long time leav­ing every­one won­der­ing exact­ly their strat­e­gy is with the Ham­bur­glar. Right now, the inter­est is because peo­ple don’t grasp exact­ly what McDon­ald’s is try­ing to do.

For such a large com­pa­ny, it’s a strange mar­ket­ing tech­nique, but it’s great. I mean, Time Mag­a­zine did a piece on essen­tial­ly what is a guy wear­ing a Lone Ranger mask and a fun­ny hat.

The cam­paign obvi­ous­ly wasn’t cost­ly, and it’s get­ting peo­ple talk­ing, and it’s also sub­lim­i­nal­ly get­ting peo­ple to think about their youth and the orig­i­nal Ham­bur­glar, and prob­a­bly time they spent at McDon­ald’s. I’m excit­ed to see where they take it.

The New Hamburglar: A Marketing Failure

Megan Hartman, head of strategy, Red Peak Youth

The Ham­bur­glar is a mar­ket­ing fail because McDon­ald’s missed an oppor­tu­ni­ty to bring the orig­i­nal Ham­bur­glar back.

We’ve seen mil­len­ni­als respond real­ly well to nos­tal­gic mar­ket­ing that brings back char­ac­ters of their youth (Kraft with Vanil­la Ice and Microsoft­’s ’90s ad).

McDon­ald’s would have been bet­ter suit­ed play­ing up the nos­tal­gia of the orig­i­nal Ham­bur­glar rather than rein­vent­ing him.

Ian Fitzpatrick, chief strategy officer, Almighty

The re-intro­duc­tion of the Ham­burg­er is such an odd moment of meh from a brand that’s doing so many oth­er things well. How­ev­er fleet­ing­ly tum­blr-able he might be, he feels odd­ly under-pro­duced and thrown-togeth­er. The brand is doing so much right at the moment — stream­lin­ing its dri­ve-thru menu, lim­it­ing new prod­uct intro­duc­tions — that I’m not sure where he fits in to the sto­ry of where McDon­ald’s is head­ed (nor was he ever real­ly all that inte­gral to the brand’s past). Until some­one can explain how he improves the expe­ri­ence of, or enthu­si­asm for, being a McDonald’s cus­tomer, he just feels tacked-on.

Guy Martin Smalley, founder, Bowery Creative

I’m not lovin’ it.

It’s safe to say that the new Ham­bur­glar is a dis­as­ter. Chil­dren love ani­ma­tion, and 30- to 40-year-olds love nos­tal­gia — this seems almost engi­neered to be as unap­peal­ing as pos­si­ble to their main demo­graph­ic.

The ques­tion becomes: What next? This is a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for McDon­ald’s to show how nim­ble they are. A quick “you spoke – we lis­tened” cam­paign could do won­ders for them here. But per­haps that was the plan all along…

Jim Angleton, president, Aegis

The Ham­bur­glar will be anoth­er fail­ure for McDon­ald’s.

McDon­ald’s appears to be grasp­ing for recog­ni­tion, to [rein­vent] itself, and to take into con­sid­er­a­tion pre­vi­ous food/menu issues, earn­ings, and social media buzz.

When you play defense mar­ket­ing, it shows.

Pre­dic­tion: Ham­bur­glar is per­ceived as lame and a bore to youth and a dis­con­nect with their par­ents.

LJ Jones, senior analyst, Partner Fusion

The Ham­bur­glar at first appears to be a win but ulti­mate­ly it’s a fail. Let me explain:

The Ham­bur­glar looks like a win because it’s get­ting us talk­ing about McDon­ald’s. Blog­gers are blog­ging, Twit­ter is tweet­ing, arti­cles are being writ­ten. There is a lot of buzz. But the ulti­mate mea­sure of suc­cess is whether it increas­es sales.

Just because peo­ple are buzzing about some­thing does­n’t mean that peo­ple are will­ing to buy. Take for exam­ple, William Hung. Hung was a con­tes­tant on “Amer­i­can Idol”. Every­one was buzzing about him. Blog­gers blogged, Twit­ter tweet­ed. But did any­one buy his album? No. Buzz does not equal sales.

McDon­ald’s prob­lems are far greater than the buzz about an old Hap­py Meal char­ac­ter can solve. Their busi­ness mod­el is strug­gling and the Ham­bur­glar won’t save it.

The New Hamburglar: A Genius Failure

Paul Matthews, account manager, Arbor Bay Marketing

The Ham­bur­glar is suc­cess­ful – if the point is to build up a dif­fer­ent face for the brand of McDon­ald’s. He is way bet­ter than a creepy white-paint­ed-face clown with obnox­ious red hair.

At least with the Ham­bur­glar we can see that he has a face and isn’t going to poten­tial­ly eat us like that creepy clown does in Stephen King’s “It.” Clowns get a bad rap in the cur­rent social stratos­phere, but a hand­some guy in a mask…it works.

But is bur­glary some­thing that is a pos­i­tive image? McDon­ald’s may get back­lash about the thiev­ery aspect of the char­ac­ter if they dwell on him too much.

What’s your take on the new Ham­bur­glar?