McDonald's Inner Child / #ReindeerReady (2020) :90 (UK)

McDonald's continue with their seasonal reindeer ready labeling of carrot treats, this year the story is about a mother and a sullen teenage son who is too cool to get into the Christmas spirit.
All of mom's efforts with silly antlers seem to fail, until he sees the carrot treats in his happy meal and his inner child gets excited enough to entice him to a snowball fight.
As they are ready to go to bed he remembers the carrots, and places them by the fireplace, as mom hugs her little boy.

The soundtrack chosen with this is an indie version of Alphaville's 1984 hit "forever young", which really embodies everything about retooling old hits with indie singers for ads that I hate. First off, they always manage to choose songs with lyrics that are "one the nose" but mean something completely different - much like they did with Mazda "Dreams". 
The song isn't about a mother's relationship with her baby boy who is growing up, despite how often they repeat "forever young". It's about fear of nuclear war and it was influenced heavily by the political climate of the early 1980s at the height of the cold war. It was a smash hit in Scandinavia and German-speaking countries, where I remember listening to it on shitty orange "freestyle walkman" headphones. The song is really moody about love that can't last because death will come, and it makes me wonder where dad is because I can see his homemade Christmas ornament in the tree. Did he die in the nuclear blast? Gee McDonald's, way to bring the party down.

Client:  McDonald's

Song: Forever Young performed by Becky Hill