McDonald’s turns everyday shortcuts into an outdoor campaign

McDonald’s Netherlands has launched a print and outdoor campaign with TBWA\NEBOKO and OMD Netherlands that maps the unofficial shortcuts people already take on their way to its restaurants.

The idea draws on a familiar sight in towns and cities across the country: informal paths created by people choosing the quickest route from A to B.

For the team behind the work, those desire lines offered a simple but telling insight into how people move through the world and, in some cases, towards McDonald’s.

Rather than creating new routes, the campaign identifies ones that already exist.

By combining open map data with McDonald’s restaurant locations, the team found unofficial paths that lead directly to nearby sites, then photographed them in their everyday surroundings for a series of local executions.

“Shortcuts never appear without a reason,” said Els Dijkhuizen, CMO of McDonald’s Netherlands. “They reveal where people truly want to go and, in this case, that often turns out to be McDonald’s.”

The campaign is rolling out across print and outdoor in cities including Almelo, Eindhoven, Venray, Woerden and Lemmer.

McDonald’s has also made clear that the work is not intended to encourage people to ignore local rules or use any specific route, keeping the focus on observation rather than instruction.

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