As the British public began to slowly emerge from lockdown at the end of 2020, the McDonald’s breakfast menu came back with a bang. 2021 saw a big opportunity to reframe our breakfast proposition and relaunch the breakfast business unit with a brand-new platform.

The objective of the platform was to drive sales, increase brand salience and affinity, increase customers’ emotional connection with McDonald’s as a breakfast destination and to showcase the deliciousness of our food.

Whilst there was a sizeable budget across the campaign it its entirety, our standout piece was an understated wrappers campaign (£50k budget) which was one component of a much larger multichannel platform launch.

The overarching idea sitting above the wrappers work is ‘Breakfast, done properly’, this is essentially the perfect manifestation of the role of the breakfast sub-brand. Nothing quite compares to the comforting satisfaction of a McDonald’s breakfast. We launched a multi-faceted campaign to express the ‘properly’ part of the platform idea, expressing customers’ rational permissibility justifications, from ingredients, to preparation, to provenance, to taste, a McDonald’s breakfast will always be properly satisfying. So satisfying that a Hash Brown, a Bacon Roll or a McMuffin never stick around for long!

Breakfast used to be known as the most important meal of the day, but in recent times it has been forgotten. Through McDonald’s iconic menu, we wanted to shift perception of breakfast and remind the nation how good it feels to start the day properly, so we launched a bold, minimalist OOH campaign that showcased recently demolished breakfast products; only an empty wrapper and remnants remained. It’s almost as if the photographer couldn’t resist! This brave execution aimed to push the brand’s food credentials… without overtly branding the work, or showing a single bit of food; It’s so delicious it didn’t last the duration of the shoot.

In terms of sales, the wrappers campaign contributed to an all-time record week for total Breakfast units in October 2021, 12% YoY growth of the category since platform launch, and the hero product, the McMuffin sold 150mil units since the campaign launched.

From a customer perspective, the wrappers OOH campaign helped to drive significant uplift within the conversion audience on the following statements:

• Is a brand I trust

• Is good value for money

• Good quality food

• Is a brand changing for the better