McDonald's has made something of a habit of transforming everyday items like couches, painter's tape and even simple horizontal lines into visual representations of its most famous food.
The campaigns are a testament to the distinctiveness of the burger giant's brand assets, like its famed Golden Arches, or the iconic menu items like its French Fries and the Big Mac.
They have become embedded in the public's consciousness thanks not only to the "billions and billions served," but decades of advertising prominently featuring its food.
Speaking with Campaign (when it was still The Message in Canada) after its popular 2020 Moving Day campaign in Quebec, Cossette's then national creative director, Alexandre Gadoua, said that the QSR has "strong iconic visuals, deeply rooted in years and years of good ads."
Again working with Cossette, the QSR has created a new visual "toolkit" for franchisees who are opening new—or newly renovated—locations.
The visuals are comprised of confetti representations of its most popular menu items, including the Big Mac, French Fries, and Egg McMuffin.
The goal is to present new McDonald's locations as "festive meeting places," said Cossette's creative director, Alexandre Jutras.
And while the tendency these days might be to assume the work to be computer generated or even AI, a making-of video shows that the visuals were achieved through some good old-fashioned human ingenuity.
Pieces of paper in the colours of famous menu items were arranged on a small trampoline to create a representation of those items. The confetti—nearly 200,000 pieces in total, according to set designer Pascal Brousseau—was then launched into the air, and captured using a high-speed camera capable of shooting between 20 and 30 frames per second.
The visuals are designed to appear across multiple consumer touchpoints, including in-store advertising, out-of-home, social media, newspaper ads and direct mail, whenever a new restaurant opens.
The creative approach was inspired by a 2021 campaign called "Bubbles of Happiness," which used nine-foot tall balloon structures to create representations of the well-known menu items.
And there's a chance people will be seeing a lot of that confetti in the next few years. McDonald's is in the midst of an ambitious expansion strategy that will see it open 50,000 new restaurants worldwide by 2027, with Canada figuring in those expansion plans.
“At McDonald’s, we like offering joy to our customers,” said Melissa Hains, director, field marketing at McDonald’s Canada. “The inauguration of restaurants is more than just an expansion, it’s a celebration. We want to welcome our customers with an invitation that embodies the festive spirit and friendly atmosphere of McDonald’s—a consistent message for all our establishments in Canada.”
"Each restaurant opening is a celebration in itself, creating a lot of anticipation and enthusiasm among local communities," added Jutras.
"The brand aimed to provide an easy-to-use and comprehensive toolkit designed to meet the franchise's communication needs for announcing these openings."
