Hasta La Creative!

McDonald’s unleashed its strange, new, Halloween costume-attired Hamburglar in a series of ads over the past week–and today we meet his antithesis in the form of the “OG Hamburglar.”

Yes, this would be the “original gangster” Mcdonald’s character as we remember him. Apparently he’s been paroled; in this new project from a self-described group of “rogue creatives,” Ronald and Grimace pick the ‘Burglar up from jail in their sweet ride.

Among those in the aforementioned group is former CP+B/Ogilvy creative director Brett Landry, who explains the effort with this quote:

“This is a project that has been in the works for over two years. We were approached by a top production company to produce our original script which allowed us to make something that we think is worthy of any major film and effects studio. We love the Hamburglar and hope that McDonald’s will enjoy our interpretation of the original character.”

If the #OGHamburglar project has piqued your interest, the folks involved encourage you to head on over to their campaign website and submit your ideas on what the OG Hamburglar should do next now that he’s a free (spokes)man. Who knows–your submission might just make it into the next chapter of the ongoing saga starring everyone’s favorite dentally challenged criminal.

Editor’s note: You guys can now please stop emailing this campaign to us and linking to it in the comments.

If the name Max Greenfield doesn’t ring a bell, he’s one of the stars on Fox’s New Girl. 

You’ll be seeing plenty of him over the next month or so thanks to a new campaign from McDonald’s to promote the fast-food giant’s Third Pound Sirloin Burgers.

Greenfield, in fact, shot 25 spots in a day for the project (helmed by Leo Burnett), which provides us with a constant stream of “Lovin’ Reminders.”

It’s part of a larger brand effort from McDonald’s to “be transparent” as the company tries to overcome a somewhat distressing year that included very little in the way of good news. Whether efforts like this can provide a bit of a turnaround remains to be seem, but you can check out more of the Leo spots below and be the judge: too folksy for their own good?

Client: McDonald’s
Agency: Leo Burnett Chicago
Campaign: “Sirloin Third Pound Burger Lovin’ Reminders”
Chief Creative Officer: Susan Credle
Executive Creative Director: John Hansa
Senior Creative Director: Tony Katalinic
Creative Directors: Michael Porritt, Frank Oles
Associate Creative Director: Gloria Dusenberry
Art Director: Scott Fleming
Copywriters: Brandon Crockett, Chris Davis, Leigh Kunkel
Head of Production: Vincent Geraghty
Executive Producer: Denis Giroux
Senior Producer: Scott Gould
Business Manager: Shirley Costa
Senior Talent Manager: Linda Yuen
Music Supervisor: Chris Clark
Managing Account Director: Jennifer Cacioppo
Account Directors: Josh Raper, Jennifer Klopf
Account Supervisor: Dave Theibert
Account Manager: Sue Rickey
Planning Directors: Claudia Steer
Legal: Carla Michelotti, Laura Cooney
Clearance: Michelle Overby
Editorial Production: Cutters Studio
Post Production: Flavor Chicago
Audio: Another Country

“When I needed McDonald’s, McDonald’s was there for me. When no one else was.”

James Franco offered an unlikely endorsement of the fast-food chain Thursday—at a time when its treatment of employees is under scrutiny—by writing a Washington Post op-ed in which he fondly recalls working there as a struggling actor in the ’90s.

It was 1996. Franco had dropped out of UCLA, against his parents’ wishes, and was trying to pay his own way while sleeping on a couch in a Los Angeles house with two other actors.

“Someone asked me if I was too good to work at McDonald’s,” writes Franco, now 37. “Because I was following my acting dream despite all the pressure not to, I was definitely not too good to work at McDonald’s. I went to the nearest Mickey D’s and was hired the same day.”

And he has quite the stories from the job—how he worked on different accents while manning the drive-through; how he was hit on by a male co-worker who didn’t speak English; how he started eating leftover cheeseburgers even though he’d been vegetarian; how “everyone ate straight from the fry hopper.”

The essay is nostalgic and anecdotal. Yet it’s likely to get some serious attention in part because of McDonald’s current battle with employees over wages. The chain plans to raise the minimum wage for its workers by more than $1, to $9.90, by July 1. But many workers say that’s just not enough. It also says it will to sell off some franchises, so that it won’t have to pay as many workers that increased wage.

Franco acknowledges all of this, and is clearly rooting for the company. “How this cost cut will affect jobs remains unclear,” he writes. “But I want the strategy to work.”

In closing, Franco states plainly that he was “treated fairly well at McDonald’s. If anything, they cut me slack.” And yes, he still eats there, every once in a while.

“After reading Fast Food Nation, it’s hard for me to trust the grade of the meat,” he writes. “But maybe once a year, while on a road trip or out in the middle of nowhere for a movie, I’ll stop by a McDonald’s and get a simple cheeseburger: light, and airy, and satisfying.”

His thoughts on the new Hamburglar remain unclear.

Here’s a nifty invention for people brave enough to eat McDonald’s—the new “BagTray” from DDB Budapest.

It is, as it sounds, a bag that’s also a tray. Just tear off a tab at the bottom of the brown paper bag, pull off the top and watch the whole thing turn into a cardboard tray that will reduce the odds of spilling your oversized soda all over the back seat of your car, or your laptop, or the lawn where you’re having a picnic (though surely the ants would love that).

Hopefully, you also won’t have to worry about the grease from your fries soaking through a flimsier vessel and dumping its golden payload on the floor, ruining your day and staining your property (though odds are there’s enough oil packed in there to eat through foamcore).

The product name is more or less perfect, clear and direct but also just the right amount of silly. It helps that the graphics in the demo video are charmingly twee, in a corporate sort of way—even if the willfully quirky ukelele-and-whistling-and-handclaps soundtrack wants so badly for you to be happy that it might make you claw your ears off instead.

Regardless, whether you’re a mom feeding her kids while shuttling them around (though she’s still pretty blasé about tilting the whole thing) or a cool kid just hanging out with your friends on your skateboard (are teenagers really that polite these days?) or a busy business executive cramming in lunch at your desk (that guy totally looks like he works at the ad agency), it’s clear the BagTray is the bag/tray for you.

Whether the tool actually works is probably a different question. And it’s also not clear whether you can use one without going to Hungary, which sort of undermines the whole convenience factor.

CREDITS
Client: McDonald’s
Agency: DDB Budapest
Chief Creative Officer: Péter Tordai
Head of Art/Art director: Guilherme Somensato
Copywriter: Vera Länger, Giovanni Pintaude
Illustrator: Adrián Bajusz
Product Designer: Márk Dávid, András Bálint
Animation: Réka Horányi, Anita Kolop
Business Director: Judit Majosi
Account/Producer: Rozália Szigeti
Promo film: Somnium Studio

Here’s a simple and fun McDonald’s campaign from Leo Burnett Dubai promoting the fast-food chain’s delivery service, showing various characters receiving exactly what they love in a McDonald’s bag. (Not McDonald’s food, mind you, though you get the point.)

And that’s a key that the robot is getting, people. A key.

Via Adeevee.

More ads and credits below.

CREDITS
Client: McDonald’s
Agency: Leo Burnett Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Executive Creative Director: Andre Nassar
Creative Director: Rondon Fernandes
Art Director: Daniel Salles, Robison Mattei, Victor Toyofuku
Copywriter: Wayne Fernandes
Head Of Art: Bruno Bomediano

Montreal-based agency N/A launched a campaign for McDonald’s, introducing a new brand positioning and tagline, “Welcome to McDonald’s.”

The campaign marks the first repositioning of the brand in Canada since 2012’s “Our Food, Your Questions” and the first major brand campaign under chief marketing officer Antoinette Benoit, who entered into that role roughly a year ago. Like the brand’s stateside campaign, “Welcome to McDonald’s” deals in cheery, unbridled positivity.

In a new 30-second spot entitled “Nicknames,” a McDonald’s worker asks viewers, “Have you met last-minute Pete, or first-thing Sally, story-telling Mary?” before answering “I have.” The spot emphasizes the diversity of the chain’s customers, showing patrons of all ages and backgrounds. It’s quite the sidestep from “Our Food, Your Questions” and the brand’s typical approach in Canada, which may explain the decision to work with N/A rather than agency of record Cosette. Tribal Worldwide also worked on digital content for the campaign, which includes print and OOH.

According to Benoit, these were real customers captured in the ad, who were later asked for consent to use the footage, culled from over 115 hours of filming. “It’s a different way to go behind the golden arches,” she told Marketing.

Leo Burnett took quite the minimalist route with its Oscar campaign for McDonald’s, using nothing but text to evoke classic movies.

The 60-second spot likens movies such as Jaws, Psycho, The Silence of the Lambs and King Kong to McDonald’s iconic Big Mac, an audacious claim to be sure, ending with the line “Lovin’ takes the right ingredients.” Aside from any qualms about the comparison, the ad does mostly succeed at conveying movies with just a few lines of text, at its best (fava beans + chianti + people…for dinner) mixing in some humor. There’s also something oddly satisfying about how well the text synced up with Debussy’s “Claire de Lune.” Still, how you feel about the approach will largely come down to whether or not you think a fast-food chain should be comparing itself to the classics, and we’re guessing McDonald’s won itself plenty of haters with this one.

For a company no one actually likes, people sure are interested in McDonald’s food. This interest often takes shape as vulgar curiosity and conjecture about specific menu items. I still remember thinking their burgers were made from vat-grown mutant cows with no bones or central nervous system, for instance.

I say this because McDonald’s is finally capitalizing on the myths surrounding its Big Mac secret sauce by selling bottles of it for the first time. Creatively titled “Big Mac Special Sauce,” which sounds more interesting than “1000 Island Dressing Variant,” the legendary burger enhancer will be sold in a limited run of 200 bottles.

As with all bewilderingly valuable things, the first bottle is being sold on eBay in Australia, with proceeds going to the Ronald McDonald House Charities. Bidding started at 99 cents Australia but is now up to $23,000—or almost U.S. $18,000. (And no, you can’t pay with lovin’. There is hope for the impecunious, though, as some McDonald’s locations in Australia will reportedly be selling tiny tubs of the stuff for just 50 cents this month.)

It’s an interesting move. People have been replicating the sauce themselves for decades, so there’s clearly a market for it. And the campaign will surely succeed when measured in not-entirely-genuine Facebook posts about it.

It would be funnier and more interesting if it were Jack In The Box doing it, though.

Via Design Taxi.

With no shortage of new advertising coming from McDonald’s (for better or worse), it can’t come as much of a surprise that it’s joined Super Bowl lineup, too.

Following a teaser earlier in the week that suggested customers would soon have a new way to pay at McDonald’s, the chain has now unveiled the full spot from Leo Burnett—explaining the mystery currency.

Check it out below.

With this spin on the “I’m lovin’ it” idea, McDonald’s is putting its money where its mouth is. Instead of cash, it asks random patrons to pay by showing acts of love—calling their mom, hugging, doing a dance or praising their friends and family. The idea will extend to some real-world stores through Valentine’s Day.

It’s certainly a cute and wholesome idea. I hope they come to Adweek’s local McDonald’s on 4th Avenue and St. Mark’s Place, where everyone could really use some more lovin’.

I also wonder how will this go over in Nevada, one of the few places where it’s already legal to pay with lovin’.

McDonald’s really wants people to think it cares about community. But go figure, not everyone is convinced.

The brand’s new ad from Leo Burnett, which aired Sunday during NFL games and on the Golden Globe Awards, focuses on McDonald’s franchises that have, over the past 20 years, used their roadside signs to support, celebrate or otherwise acknowledge local and national events, both happy and tragic—everything from 9/11 to the homecoming of troops to a nearby base to Boston’s spirit in the wake of the marathon bombing to the 30th wedding anniversary of a couple who’ve celebrated every year of marriage at a McDonald’s. (The campaign includes a Tumblr page that explains some of the more specific examples.)

The centerpiece spot, part of a broader brand refresh that began with the quite well-liked “Archenemies” ad, got a less-than-enthusiastic response on Twitter during NBC’s Globes telecast.“McDonald’s is presenting itself as the face of corporate kindness? PAY YOUR EMPLOYEES A LIVING WAGE,” said one detractor, in a post retweeted more than 80 times. Said another, “@McDonalds I just threw up in my mouth watching your commercial… Desperate attempt to rescue your image.”

To be fair, some viewers enjoyed the spot. “This McDonald’s marquee sign is fantastic!” tweeted the handle of Des Moines radio station Star 102.5. But the backlash around the fair pay debate is predictable, given the high profile of the recent Fight for 15 protests. And that makes a sign like “Keep Jobs in Toledo” seem kind of tone deaf, even if it technically refers to a nearby factory at risk of closure.

Plus, the soundtrack—a children’s choir covering indie pop band Fun’s “Carry On”—makes such a clumsy grab for the audience’s heartstrings that it’s hard not to think of crocodile tears. In the words of another viewer, “I’m not lovin’ it.”

See more of the Twitter reaction below. What do you think of the ad?

 
LOVIN’ IT

Call me a chump, but I loved that McDonald’s ad. #GoldebGlobes

— Roger Simon (@politicoroger) January 12, 2015

@McDonalds just won the #GoldenGlobes … that was expert. #advertising

— Scott Forshay (@scottforshay) January 12, 2015

Watch this @mcdonalds ad from @dlwahl1 @susancredle @leoburnett everyone. It’s brilliant. http://t.co/ohH0n87HS4

— Cindy Gallop (@cindygallop) January 11, 2015

Best work from @McDonalds in a long time–well done @dlwahl1& team and @LeoBurnett: McDonald’s: Signs: http://t.co/Y3YO4eBD78 via @YouTube

— Jim Stengel (@JimStengel) January 11, 2015

 
NOT LOVIN’ IT

That @McDonald‘s commercial is shameless, vulgar, tasteless, cynical, crass. In other words, as bad as the food. #GoldenGlobes

— Harold Itzkowitz (@HaroldItz) January 12, 2015

Can’t stop thinking about how weird and gross that McDonald’s ad is.

— Zach Floyd (@floyding) January 12, 2015

This McDonald’s ad is like everything I’ve ever had to tell my clients “NO YOU HAVE NO STAKE IN THIS CONVERSATION, BIG BRAND!” Barf.

— dulce calor (@dulcecalor) January 12, 2015

McDonald’s has reached a new, delusional level of grandeur with their “marquee” commercial.

— Greg Shumchenia (@GregShum) January 11, 2015

I really feel we can all come together as a country over how offensively manipulative and cynical that McDonald’s ad is.

— Erika Hall (@mulegirl) January 11, 2015