McDonald's Unveils Festive Edition of 'Raise Your Arches' Initiative

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

The ad 'Fancy a McDonald's this Christmas?' follows a similar format as the first two versions of the platform, where the focus is not on the brand's food or restaurants. Created by Leo Burnett UK, this ad only briefly showcases a McDonald's restaurant at the end. Like previous ads in the series, it highlights people silently communicating with each other through raised eyebrows, indicating their decision to go to McDonald's together. The ad portrays individuals leaving festive situations, such as a boring office Christmas party or a school nativity play, in favor of visiting McDonald's.

Santa Claus also makes an appearance in the ad, leaving his grotto to grab a meal at McDonald's. A crowd gathers and marches towards the restaurant. The ad concludes with McDonald's employees eagerly awaiting the arrival of hungry customers, accompanied by the tagline 'Fancy a McDonald's?' displayed on-screen. The background music for the ad is the popular 1980s hit 'Jump' by Van Halen.

Scheduled to debut on TV and in cinemas this Saturday, the Christmas ad is further supported by a social media campaign. This campaign includes a Snapchat filter that enables users to virtually try on different outfits from the ad simply by raising their eyebrows.

McDonald's is currently hosting a digital event called Festive Wins in anticipation of Christmas. Through this event, customers have the opportunity to take advantage of special offers and win exciting prizes by using the McDonald's app. Among the fantastic items available to be won in this promotional campaign are McDonald's branded Crocs.

Following up success

The initial part of the Raise Your Arches campaign, titled 'Fancy a McDonald's?', released in January, marked a departure for the fast-food brand by not featuring its restaurants or food. Despite this, it achieved an impressive brand recognition score of 98, according to data from effectiveness firm System1.

Furthermore, the first version of the advertisement received a highly favorable long-term brand-building effectiveness score of 4.7 out of 5.9 stars from System1. However, the follow-up installment of the campaign, titled 'Next Stop, McDonald's', released in August, did not replicate the success of the original, receiving a decent rating of 3.1 stars.

The brand is hoping that its festive installment will achieve the same level of success as the first one.

The CEO of McDonald's, Chris Kempczinski, has praised the Raise Your Arches concept. This campaign has been expanded to over 30 markets due to its popularity with UK consumers. This expansion is a demonstration of the "one McDonald's way" principle, in which the fast-food chain implements a singular idea across various markets to establish local relevance and global consistency for the brand.

McDonald's 2022 Christmas campaign, titled 'The List', garnered the highest ad awareness among the UK's major Christmas ads in the previous year, as reported by YouGov's brand health tracker BrandIndex.