McDONALD's
When I joined Leo Burnett, the change of pace from the genteel life at AMV hit me like a juggernaut.
Chiefly responsible for this intensity was the enormous demand the fast turnaround retail business that was McDonald’s put on the agency.
It was a pace and intensity I embraced very quickly.
In John Hawkes, Senior Vice President of Marketing, we had a great client.
Being a retail business there was no time to research anything.
Instead, I’d travel to see John in East Finchley two or three times a week with work and he’d say yes or no – mostly yes.
In my seven and a half years working on the McDonald’s brand in the UK we helped the business grow significantly, one year contributing to 12.3% year on year growth.
We made over 40 tvcs every year and were on air 365 days a year in addition to producing a slew of outdoor, radio and point of sale.
The work we produced for the brand won awards both in the UK and internationally – at The British Television Advertising Awards, D&AD, Cannes and The One Show amongst others.
And it turned heads beyond awards juries.
One article in The Guardian newspaper commented that our advertising for McDonald’s had made the brand ‘as British as fish and chips’ and credited us with ‘weaving McDonald’s into the fabric of British society’.
Yet for all the plaudits we received for our work, there was a strong retail imperative running through everything we did.
The criteria for evaluating work that we agreed with John and his team was that every piece of material we produced had to ‘actively provoke consideration of a visit to a McDonald’s restaurant’.
If a piece of work wasn’t felt to meet this criteria, however much it was liked it didn’t happen.
When we won a Gold Lion at Cannes we ordered a replica for John and when I presented it to him I reminded him that he had always said he was happy to win advertising awards as long as the work we won for was doing great business for him.
Promotions
‘Plumber’ ‘Estate Agent’ ‘Hansen’
Our creative teams had been struggling with a 20-second TV price promotion brief for the ‘Quarter Pounder’ and time was closing in.
Mark Tutssel and I were in a cab back from Heathrow on the Sunday after Cannes and were tired and hung over when we created this campaign.
‘It can’t be that difficult’, I said. ‘How long does it take to earn 99p?’
Bingo! By the time we got out of the cab Mark and I had written these spots.
We told our client, John Hawkes, that we needed only 10 seconds, not 20.
John was delighted and so were we. Successful promotion. Cannes Gold. D&AD Silver.
Directors – Jeff Stark, Gus Filgate.
‘McRUBY’
When McDonald’s decided to combine the nation’s favourite fast food with the nation’s favourite Indian food they wanted to make a noise about it.
Three teams came to us with the same idea – to lampoon the kind of hilarious low budget cinema ads for the local curry house we were used to in the UK.
Mike Oughton and Zane Radcliffe were first out of the blocks and they had written their script really well. ‘Take your taste buds on a culinary journey’ was actually lifted direct from one such low budget effort.
Steve Reeves directed and when I showed the rough cut to John Hawkes he literally fell off his chair laughing.
‘Mouseholes’
Some ideas just sell themselves.
How much more simply or charmingly could this price promotion have been communicated?
Plaudits to Laurence Quinn and Mark Norcutt.
Happy Meals
‘Brotherly Love’
This was one of the first commercials that got McDonald’s advertising talked about in the UK.
The charming story of a little boy who naively believes a Happy Meal can make anyone happy was written by Mark Thompson and Paul Taylor and beautifully directed by Kirk Jones.
‘Being Six’
Jonathan Budds and Anita Davis wrote and Tarsem directed the idea that life isn’t always a bowl of roses when you’re six years of age but that there’s always McDonald’s Happy Meals.
Sponsorship
‘Football in the Community’ Idents
As sponsor of both The Champions League and Football in the Community, McDonald's was now heavily involved in football.
Jonathan Budds, Anita Davis, Richard Selbourne and Adrian Belcham wrote and James Howarth directed this funny series of idents to demonstrate the brand's understanding of the game at grass roots level.
McDONALD’s BRAND
‘Clever Daddy’
My first work at Leo Burnett.
I had been hired as a senior creative director to partner Mark Tutssel and felt the pressure when the whole department was briefed on the big McDonald’s brand ad.
Baby listening monitors were fairly new and I had heard a horror story about a young woman being overheard at a dinner party by her husband while she told her friend upstairs about a torrid affair she was having.
This wasn’t quite on brand for McDonald’s so, using it as inspiration, I wrote this story instead.
Simon Cheek directed and ‘Clever Daddy’ became a very talked about and popular commercial.
It also cemented my relationship with Vice-President of Marketing for the UK, John Hawkes.
‘Signature’
Our senior McDonald’s client, John Hawkes, had seen that, with the advent of The Champions League, football was about to explode in the UK and so he signed the England captain, Alan Shearer, to represent the brand.
At first, fast food and a finely honed athlete didn’t appear the greatest of fits but I reasoned a ‘man of the people’ and ‘the food of the people’ worked better and to launch the partnership wrote this story.
Director Kirk Jones did a great job getting such good performances from Alan and the young boy.
‘My Kinda Town’
The follow-up to ‘Signature’.
Anita Davis and Jonathan Budds liked the idea that as iconic and as much of a hero as Alan Shearer was in his home town, Newcastle, he actually came across as a bit dour and boring.
Chris Palmer effectively shot the film on video during his recce of Newcastle and, at the pre-production meeting, he played a 60-second cut and told John Hawkes that in the real film the pictures would be prettier and his producer, who had stood in, would be replaced by Alan Shearer.
It was the easiest pre-production meeting I’ve ever attended.