Over the past three years, McDonald's has been building the brand platform "Fancy a McDonald's?" in the UK. This platform was created based on the insight that being invited to McDonald's is a moment to relieve life's pressures and feel good.

Our challenge was to reimagine this platform by finding new meaning and emotions associated with the McDonald's brand. To achieve this, we conducted extensive ethnographic research with McDonald's brand enthusiasts. This research led us to a creative insight that an invitation to McDonald's is so common that it can often be communicated without any words.

With this insight in mind, our goal was to bring it to life in the most creatively impactful way possible, with the ambition of turning this knowing look into a sticky social behaviour that landed in culture, to drive brand affinity in a bold, new way.

Everybody knows, an invitation to McDonald’s represents a moment to take a break from life’s pressures and just feel good.

But we noticed something. An invitation to McDonald’s is so universal, it can be communicated without words, food or restaurants. All it takes, is a knowing look.

We took ownership of that knowing look by turning it into a physical action inherently linked with the McDonald’s brand. A double eyebrow raise has always been a gesture that people use to communicate playful mischief, but we created an unmistakable link between the visual of raised eyebrows and the iconic arches of McDonald’s.

By turning this behaviour into a 360-brand experience, activated across every channel, we were able to embed the idea firmly into culture.

Now anytime, anyone raises their eyebrows, it can mean only one thing.

Fancy a McDonald’s?

To people of all ages, from all parts of the world, an invitation to McDonald’s represents a moment to feel good.

As such, we had the opportunity to assert ourselves in a way no other restaurant could.

We uncovered the insight that an invitation to McDonald’s is so universal, it can be communicated with just a knowing look. This unspoken association became the jumping off point for our campaign, as we aimed to embed the action in culture by empowering McDonald’s fans to take ownership of the invitation using the power of social, turbo charged through influencer participation.

McDonald's claimed ownership of the unspoken invitation to McDonald's, by turning it into an ownable action that quickly became a cultural trend and spread across 35 countries, through a socially minded campaign that launched on Blue Monday at the beginning of January, with the goal of spreading joy at a time when the nation needs it most.

We began with a bold ambient stunt that saw McDonald's change their logo for the first time in history. Then followed that up with television and cinema spots, contextual outdoor messaging, and a mobile sales promotion.

And then, something amazing happened. The Raise Your Arches invitation began to catch on and spread through culture, with millions of brand fans organically joining in the campaign and creating their own eyebrow-raising content. Before long, there were millions of invitations to McDonald's being spread on social media with our branded eyebrow movement.

Did it work? Oh Yeah!

In just over one month, "Raise Your Arches" became a cultural trend that had the world talking about it, with YouGov Buzz Scores double any other McDonald’s UK campaign. It also took our advertising to new emotional heights, with an ‘emotional intensity’ score of 1.65 vs a norm of 1.26 (System 1). And having previously stagnated, ‘Brand Love’ scores are now back in growth because of the ‘Raise Your Arches’ campaign.

Beyond the frenzied industry conversation, the buzz also extended into culture. The film instantly went viral with over 162 million views. "Raise Your Arches" content frequently trended on TikTok, inspiring well over 2.5 million pieces of user-generated content. In total, the campaign generated over 1.1 billion impressions with over 35 countries taking part.

The campaign was also a huge commercial success, contributing to a sales increase of 7.1% and over £45million incremental revenue.