The minimalist approach to McDonald's? It's all a matter of taste.

Outdoor Media Buying
Digital Out Of Home

The latest Leo Burnett campaign for McDonald’s, promoting McDelivery and featuring half of the iconic McDonald’s ‘golden arches’, ran nationally from 8 February until 21 February.

 

It would be hard to imagine a clearer and cleverer graphic device to get over the message that your McDonald’s food delivery could take off from a local McDonald’s and beam straight into your home.

 

It was simple and instantly recognisable, and deserved the applause it received for communicating its message most succinctly, with a simple ‘we deliver’ message and not a logo in sight.

 

Then there were the equally minimalist Leo Burnett ads for McDonald’s that featured just lists of ingredients.

 

Again there was no mention of the brand name. Instead we had some of the brand’s most popular food items, such as the Big Mac, the Sausage & Egg McMuffin and the Filet-O-Fish, reduced to a word list of their main components.

 

The Sausage & Egg McMuffin, for instance, becomes ‘Muffin, Egg, Sausage, Cheese, Muffin’. Each word is stacked on top of the other, mimicking the arrangement of the food itself, and is coloured in a shade reminiscent of the ingredient it names.

 

London-based agency Leo Burnett teamed up with Minneapolis-based designer David Schwen to create the Iconic Stacks campaign for outdoor billboards.

 

Said Pete Heyes, creative director at Leo Burnett, “McDonald’s is a leader. Only a handful of global brands can communicate like this. The redacted and graphic nature of this latest campaign exudes the confidence McDonald’s and its iconic products deserve.

 

“David Schwem’s graphical style helps the viewer literally build the product in their mind,” said Heyes. “The colour palette is gentle, not forced. It uses the visual truth of the products and the packaging. The type doesn’t shout. It’s humble. It’s confident.”

 

Minimalism in the name of design is all well and good, and while it works so well for McDelivery, much of the pleasure to be derived from the fare McDonald’s serves up is in the actual look of it.

 

Call me old fashioned, but you can’t eat coloured words, even when they’re pretending to be food. And no way do they get your mouth watering like the sight of a juicy burger with cheese running down it.

 

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