McDonald’s
Raise Your Arches
Challenge
In a world of mounting pressure and expectation, an invitation to McDonald’s provides us all with a small, but much needed moment of light-hearted release. How could we dramatise this feeling without showing our iconic products or restaurants?
Insight
After conducting hundreds of hours of research with McDonald’s enthusiasts we noticed that whilst nothing verbal might be happening when customers extended an invite to McDonald’s, something physical invariably was – there was a common gesture. We realised that an invite to McDonald’s is so universal it can be communicated with a simple raise of the eyebrows – a gesture that everyone in the UK is familiar with.
Idea
We claimed ownership of this knowing look that everyone understands, and turned it into a sticky, cultural action that can only mean one thing; Fancy a McDonald’s?
First we looked to ‘Seed the brows’; sparking mass hysteria ahead of launch by swapping the Golden Arches for our eyebrows across owned channels.
We then ‘Scaled the brows’ with a blockbuster launch film directed by Edgar Wright that went viral. The spot features a group of office workers inviting each other to enjoy a moment of release at McDonald’s by raising their eyebrows at one another. Before long, the whole office is conspiring together to create one epic feel-good moment.
Finally we ‘Spread the brows’ with a social campaign featuring influencer activity and filters, creating a groundswell of eyebrows across social. In just over a month, ‘Raise Your Arches’ became a cultural trend that had the world talking about it, with the film going viral with over 162 million views.