• by John Capone , January 2, 2009

When Keith Sweat sings about McNuggets he croons, "You know that you're the one I want;" then, breathlessly, "You're the one I need." He whispers to the McNuggets that it's their 25th anniversary and that he still dreams of them every night. Oh yes, McNuggets, Keith is going to make sweet, sweet love to you. Listen closely and you can hear him sliding across the satin sheets with dipping sauce all over his face.

How does this happen? "Keith Sweat is a self-professed lover of McDonald's Chicken McNuggets, and he felt the best way for him to proclaim that passion was in a special song that listeners of his radio show would connect with," says Tracy Anderson, account director, engagement marketing at Burrell, the agency that set up the promotion with The Sweat Hotel. Sweat did not return requests for comment.

And getting washed-up R&B stars to sexifiy your bite-size wads of compressed poultry parts isn't the only way to sell processed meat in the digital age. "It's important to remember that this is just one component of our overall PR program," says Nicole Neal, U.S. communications manager at McDonald's. "To connect with our AACM consumers, we tapped into a prominent McNuggets lover. McDonald's has an overall public relations program that celebrates the people who are passionate about their Chicken McNuggets, which includes a Facebook page and a Web site, nuggnuts.com."

And it's true. They, for some crazy reason, thought NuggNuts would be a good name. It sounds like something a stoner would have in his pocket. Among the more disturbing elements of the Facebook group (which, it should be noted, astoundingly, has more than 1,500 members) is an album of pictures of McNuggets that look like other things. Abe Lincoln takes the cake. Or it takes compressed chicken ass. Or whatever a NuggNut prize would entail.

Not content with having merely embarrassed Keith Sweat, McDonald's PR people also trolled Times Square and apparently gave tourists, mentally disturbed homeless people and escapees from Bellevue a nifty hat and T-shirt if they'd smile manically for the camera. Who wouldn't be lovin' it?