• The Boston Globe, Thursday, July 26, 2007 12 PM

Boston-based ad agency Arnold is using a homemade video it found on YouTube as part of a campaign for McDonald's. The footage, created by two men who play comedy clubs in their spare time, features one of them and another friend rapping about Chicken McNuggets. It's another display of how user-created content is getting more popular in the ad business. The production values are poor for a client like the Golden Arches, which spends tens of millions on it creative, but the company decided to throw out their usual approach and go for it -- at least in a limited way.

"[Arnold] wanted to try to make it organic and let it live in the space from which it came so people could relate to it more," says Ken Ebo, McDonald's Corp.'s New York marketing director, who approved the ad. The spot has been running on seven New York TV stations for the last two weeks, and he says it has boosted sales of chicken nugget meals and generated media buzz.

After being posted, the video became a YouTube hit, attracting tens of thousands of viewers and the attention of Chris Edwards, Arnold's creative director, via an anonymous email.

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