Happy Meal is a product dedicated to children, distributed all across Europe. The contents developed for the whole Happy campaign take into consideration every local specificity but also integrate McDonald’s European policy (EU Pledge) for kids under 12 advertising :-no communications related to food and beverage menu items in primary schools.-no food or beverage advertising in media aimed at pre-schoolchildren.

-no product placements of our food or drinks in the programme/editorial (non-advertising) content of any third party medium aimed at children.-no use of the licensed and our brand characters (Ronald McDonald, Happy) to encourage balanced food choices, wellbeing or educational or fun but responsible messages

Let’s bring the red box to life! As a result, Happy was born – a larger-than-life character with a cheeky sense of humour living in a whole world of Happys: they giggled, chuckled, sang, danced and put smiles on the faces of the underjoyed unhappy.Travelling everywhere, from France to Russia (more than 40 countries in Europe), Happy embodies the HappyMeal at all the touch points: inside the box itself (gift toys, packaging, etc) in-store communication such as posters, game, design, traditional advertising, broader content on-line-video-games, mobile apps, events (the 'Happy' Birthday parties) and so on.

Happy strategy is a success across Europe. More than 40 countries and 7,000 restaurants adopted him. Figures are quite impressive as 3 years after he first appeared, 92% of kids and 89% of parents in France are familiar with him and in Italy, 72% of kids and 84% of parents are aware of the character.

Meanwhile, 81% of kids in Germany described Happy as a likeable character, and 77% of kids in Spain said they liked him too. Moreover, sales figures are good as well and we can see that Spain raises it sales by 3.1 points last year and France by 5.5 points.We definitely created an iconic character who stages a kid’s meal as a licence with all the attributes and values of their favourite hero. If you look at Germany, Happy is the second favourite kids character, just after Sponge Bob!