McDonalds Japan: Mr. James

A stereotypical geeky white gaijin who cannot speak japanese is the 'new face' of McDonalds Japan. Its upsetting quite a few gaijins, apparently.

hmmm...
this guy can obviously speak pretty good Japanese (his vowel sounds are japanese etc) so therefore I doubt strongly that he is being exploited. He knows exactly what he is doing and I dont blame him. I'm not offended.

However, I'd like to hear the rationale behind this campaign. How does this encourage Japanese people to rush out and eat McDonalds? Cos it 'kawaii'?

They say all publicity is good publicity - bad or good. Publicity gets McDonalds in the public eye.
Maybe the whole 'gaijins are offended' is part of the campaign...
Maybe I'm just cynical.

But what I do think is a problem is what this will mean for Japanese language learners. Particularly low-level learners. Anybody who remotely sounds like Mr. James will have their confidence crushed. Japan is laughing. After all, no foreigner can ever speak japanese right?