OPEN LATE

TitleOPEN LATE
BrandMCDONALD'S
Product/ServiceFAST FOOD RESTAURANT
Category G07. Photography / Curation of Images
Entrant TBWA\PARIS, FRANCE
Idea Creation TBWA\PARIS, FRANCE
Credits
Name Company Position
Benjamin Marchal TBWA\Paris Executive Creative Director
Faustin Claverie TBWA\Paris Executive Creative Director
Bruno Bicalho Carvalhaes TBWA\Paris Art Director
Antoine Gauquelin TBWA\Paris Copywriter
Antoine Colin TBWA\Paris Copywriter
Helmut Stelzenberger . Photographer
Julie Champin TBWA\Paris Art Buyer
Xavier Royaux McDonald’s France SVP Chief Marketing Officer
José Jacinto McDonald’s France Advertiser Supervisor
Benoit Kolb McDonald’s France Advertiser Supervisor
Luc Bourgery TBWA\Paris Managing Director
Jonathan Serog TBWA\Paris Deputy Managing Director
Julie Montagné TBWA\Paris Account Manager
Magali Couturier TBWA\Paris Senior Project Manager

The Campaign

To light the way to McDonald’s in the city of lights, we used brand’s iconic items such as the Big Mac, French Fries and Sundae. Turning them into bokeh lights to match with the magical atmosphere of a city at night.

Creative Execution

We first got the French sculptor Olivier Favart to create intricate light installations resembling three menu items — the Big Mac, French Fries and Sundae. The sculptures took 10 days to build and required more than 250 feet of wire, 400 welds and some 1,100 LED lights that operated independently. Then, Helmut Stelzenberger photographed them with a bokeh effect, which blurs the out-of-focus points of light. This gives the effect of nighttime, reinforcing the message of the ads, which is that McDonald’s is “Open late.” The photoshoot itself took 2 days to complete.

Indication of how successful the outcome was in the market

First designed for the French market, the campaign was so appreciated by the global McDonald’s network that it will run in UK and China by 2018. All three visuals received an unprecedented media coverage for a McDonald’s print campaign. Comments on social posts were very positive as well and highlighted the effort on making a real photo shoot versus a Photoshop work. A delicious surprise knowing that the brand is constantly tackled on social networks. “I hate that I love it” was one of those comments while Adweek described the visuals as “Probably the most artful McDonald’s campaign so far”.

Our approach was to be as simple and iconic as possible to generate an immediate awareness about McDonald’s late opening hours in the city.