Every year, the king visits one of the Dutch cities to celebrate his birthday with the residents. The event is always broadcasted live on national TV and watched by millions of people. In 2016, the main stage where the king would celebrate his birthday and where the live broadcast would take place, was located right in front of our local restaurant.

So, we hijacked the event, with a spontaneous twist. We did the unthinkable; for the first time ever, McDonald’s changed her logo. We flipped the iconic Golden Arches on the outside of our restaurant, creating a W for Willem as a tribute to our popular king. But we took the idea further. For one day, we transformed all our existing restaurant equipment and facilities into ambient media mediums. The flipped iconic logo was displayed on anything and everything you could imagine, from the packaging of our products, to our

“If you are going to do something, do it all the way.” Right? Because that is what we did during our hijack of the biggest annual event of our country. Besides turning around the iconic Golden Arches of McDonald’s ? for the very first time in history ? On the outside of our restaurant, we took our stunt a little further. For just one day, we changed everything (and we mean everything) in our restaurant. Every item on the menu had a flipped M; from the packaging of the products to the façade of our restaurant building outside. This resulted in receiving incredible amounts of free media coverage and reaching millions of people, in just one day. Through one, local McDonald’s restaurant in The Netherlands.

One little twist to McDonald’s iconic logo, brought us some big results:

• 30 minutes (of the 2 hours broadcast) on national TV, with more than 3.5 million viewers (>20% of the entire country)

• An incredible amount of free publicity, amplified by the public

• Media time on different TV stations

• Earned (digital and social) media value at €1.1 million

• Last, but not least, a very grateful Facebook post from the king himself