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McDonald’s Golden Arches are now direction billboards
Left, right or straight ahead, the fast food giant has cleverly used its famed arches for directing traffic to its stores.
McDonald’s Canada’s new outdoor campaign from ad agency Cossette and media agency OMD, Novus, includes just four billboards in high-traffic areas in Toronto. It worked beautifully and there is no reason for the fast food giant to replicate the idea worldwide.
According to a McDonald spokesperson, “To create a new way-finding system, we noticed that the directions were right there in the logo. By cropping the Golden Arches into a directional path, and reducing the visuals to only what’s essential, we transformed an underutilized media space into a simple unified design system adaptable to any market around the world.”
In November 2017, the brand had come up with another clever idea – this time in the UK. The fast-food chain and Leo Burnett are running an intriguing out-of-home campaign that targeted drivers on busy highways at peak times of the day. Digital billboards placed alongside the road featured a Big Mac when traffic was light, but once it started to build, the creative switched to McDonald’s familiar golden arches with copy that read, “Stuck in a jam? There’s a light at the end of the tunnel.”