McDonald’s releases Christmas instalment of ‘Raise Your Arches’ platform

McDonald’s is tapping back into its hit ‘Raise Your Arches’ campaign for its Christmas ad, releasing a third instalment of the platform.

‘Fancy a McDonald’s this Christmas?’ follows a similar format to the first two iterations of the platform, in that the ad does not focus on the brand’s food or restaurants. Indeed, in this ad, created by agency Leo Burnett UK, a McDonald’s restaurant is only shown at the very end of the ad.

Instead, like others in the series, this ad focuses on people deciding to head to McDonald’s together, without speaking a word, only by raising their eyebrows at each other. It depicts people leaving festive scenarios, from a dull office Christmas party to a school nativity play, to instead go to McDonald’s.

Even Santa Claus is shown leaving his grotto to go and get a McDonald’s. A crowd forms, marching to the restaurant. The ad ends with smiling McDonald’s workers ready to greet the hungry customers, and the ‘Fancy a McDonald’s?’ tagline on-screen. It is soundtracked by 1980s hit ‘Jump’ by Van Halen.

The Christmas ad will debut on TV and cinema on Saturday. It is supported by a social media campaign, which includes a Snapchat filter allowing users to try on different outfits from the ad by raising their eyebrows.

McDonald’s is also running a digital promotional event, Festive Wins in the lead up to Christmas. This gives consumers the chance to access offers and win through the app. McDonald’s branded Crocs are among the goods up for grabs in the promotional activity.

Following up success

The first instalment of the Raise Your Arches campaign, ‘Fancy a McDonald’s?’, released in January, was the fast-food brand’s first ad to not showcase either its restaurants or its food. Despite this it achieved an “exceptional” brand recognition score of 98, according to data from effectiveness firm System1.

The first iteration of the ad also scored a “very strong” long-term brand-building effectiveness score of 4.7 stars (out of 5.9) from System1. However, the second instalment of the campaign, ‘Next Stop, McDonald’s’, which was released in August, did not emulate the success of the original, scoring a “good” 3.1 stars.

The brand will be hoping its festive instalment, can return similar effectiveness success to the first.

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The Raise Your Arches concept has been praised by McDonald’s global CEO Chris Kempczinski. The campaign has been scaled across more than 30 markets, after it proved a hit with UK consumers. This roll-out was cited as an example of the “one McDonald’s way” principle, which sees the fast-food chain drive a singular idea across different markets to create a local relevance and global consistency for the brand.

Last Christmas, McDonald’s festive campaign offering was ‘The List’, an ad that encouraged audiences to look beyond the materialistic aspects of Christmas and focus on spending time with family. The ad fell under its ‘Reindeer Ready’ platform, which it had been utilising since Christmas 2017.

McDonald’s 2022 festive spot achieved the highest level of ad awareness among the UK’s biggest Christmas ads last year, according to YouGov’s brand health tracker BrandIndex.