McDonald's advertising

McDonald's maintains an extensive advertising campaign. In addition to the usual media such as television, radio and newspaper ads, the company makes significant use of billboards and signage, and sponsors sporting events ranging from Little League to the FIFA World Cup and Olympic Games. The company also makes coolers of orange drink with their logo available for local events of all kinds.[1] However, television ads remain the primary form of advertisement.

McDonald's has used many different slogans to advertise in the United States, including "You deserve a break today", "Nobody can do it like McDonald's can", and from 2003 to the present day, "I'm lovin it".[2][3][4] At times, it has run into trouble with its campaigns.

History

There have been many McDonald's advertising campaigns and slogans over the years. The company is one of the most prevalent fast food advertisers, especially in the United States, where it spends the most advertising money of any fast-food restaurant and as of 2012 the fifth-more of any advertiser in the country.[5] McDonald's Canada's corporate website states that the commercial campaigns have always focused on the "overall McDonald's experience", rather than just product.[6] The purpose of the image has always been "portraying warmth and a real slice of everyday life".[6] Its TV ads, showing various people engaging in popular activities, usually reflect the season and time period. Finally, rarely in their advertising history have they used negative or comparison ads pertaining to any of their competitors; the ads have always focused on McDonald's alone, one exception being a 2008 billboard advertising the new McCafé espresso. The billboard read "four bucks is dumb", a shot at competitor Starbucks.[7]

Current campaign

I'm lovin' it is a branding campaign by McDonald's Corporation which has been in use since 2003. It was created by Heye & Partner, a McDonald's agency based in Unterhaching, Germany and a member of the DDB Worldwide Communications Group. I'm lovin' it was the company's first global advertising campaign and was unveiled in Chicago on June 12, 2003,[21] being a major 'image' change for the company and created in response to McDonald's Corporation's first ever financial loss in 2002.[22] The campaign first launched in Munich on September 2, 2003, under the German title ich liebe es[23] and the anglophone part of the campaign was launched soon after, including in the United States on September 29, 2003,[4] with the music of Tom Batoy and Franco Tortora (Mona Davis Music) and vocals by Justin Timberlake, in which the slogan appears.

The slogan has been translated into at least 11 different languages other than English - including German, Spanish, French, Chinese, Arabic, Russian, Portuguese, Turkish, Swedish and Tagalog - some with variants depending on region.

Promotional partners

Cross promotions

Australian Football League (Channel 7 and Fox Footy)
Auto racing
Starting in 2010, McDonald's sponsored NASCAR driver Jamie McMurray's Chip Ganassi Racing No. 1 Chevrolet as a part-time/secondary sponsor, and later becoming the primary sponsor for the No. 1 car in 2013.[28] Over time, McDonald's has sponsored numerous NASCAR cars, including Bill Elliott, Jimmy Spencer, Andy Houston, Kasey Kahne, Matt Kenseth and Bubba Wallace. In addition to McMurray in 2018, the company sponsored his teammate Kyle Larson's No. 42 team in select races and moved fully over to Larson in 2019 following McMurray's retirement.[29]

References

Gael Fashingbauer Cooper. McDonald's orange drink Gen X-Tinct, September 9, 2011, retrieved 2 July 2012^
Yeoman Lowbrow. You Deserve a Break Today: 1960s-1980s McDonald's History in Advertising Flashbak, 2015-01-25, retrieved 2025-11-12^
Liz Ronk. See Early Ads and Photographs From the McDonald's Archives

Controversies

In 1996, the British adult comic magazine Viz accused McDonald's of plagiarizing the name and format of its longstanding Top Tips feature, in which readers offer sarcastic tips. McDonald's had created an advertising campaign of the same name, which suggested the Top Tips (and then the alternative—save money by going to McDonald's). Some of the similarities were almost word-for-word[8]

Save a fortune on laundry bills. Give your dirty shirts to Oxfam. They will wash and iron them, and then you can buy them back for 50p. Save a fortune on laundry bills. Give your dirty shirts to a second-hand shop. They will wash and iron them, and then you can buy them back for 50p.

The case was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum, which was donated to the BBC's charity Comic Relief. However, many Viz readers believed that the comic had given permission for their use, leading to Top Tips submissions such as: "Geordie magazine editors. Continue paying your mortgage and buying expensive train sets ... by simply licensing the Top Tips concept to a multinational burger corporation."

In 2003, a ruling by the UK Advertising Standards Authority determined that the corporation had acted in breach of the codes of practice in describing how its French fries were prepared. A McDonald's print ad stated that "after selecting certain potatoes" "we peel them, slice them, fry them and that's it." It showed a picture of a potato in a McDonald's fries box. In fact the product was sliced, pre-fried, sometimes had dextrose added, was then frozen, shipped, and re-fried and then had salt added.[9]

In 2013, McDonald's encountered controversy around negative racial stereotypes when the fast-food restaurant tested one of its ads in Germany for the resident Mexican population. The title of the commercial was Los Wochos, a made-up word for the Spanish translation of the word 'week' (Woche) in German. The commercial went on to say, "When you turn ketchup into 'salsa picante', your buddy into a 'muchacho' and your burger into 'chili con carne', that means The Wochos are here. Olé." The problem was that not all of these terms are of Mexican origin; rather, "olé" is a typical expression of southern Spain, while the Latin Times claimed that chili con carne is a Texan dish.[10]

In December 29, 2016, McDonald's Malaysian issue a statement that said only certified halal cakes are allowed inside its restaurants nationwide.[11]

In 2015, McDonald's met further controversy around Mexican stereotypes when it attempted to promote its McBurrito in Mexico. The advertisement was a picture of the burrito with the words, "Tamales are a thing of the past. McBurrito Mexicana also comes wrapped." The ad was revealed just a day after la Día de la Candelaria (Candlemas, 2 February), a holiday many celebrate with eating tamales, a traditional Mexican dish eaten during most holidays. The Tex-Mex burrito was perceived by many as an insult to one of Mexico's most traditional and popular meals.[12]

In 2019, McDonald's pulled out of an advertisement deal with an American comedy podcast, Your Mom's House podcast. The reason cited for ending the deal was due to a portion of the podcast being dedicated to clips honoring, "Cool Guys". The primary clip that provoked McDonald's, now known as the "Uncle Terry" clip, showing a nude man reviewing and using various sex toys to completion. Following the initial controversy, McDonald's garnered outrage from various LGBTQIA+ groups for not being inclusive enough to sexually explorative demographics. This outrage resulted in McDonald's returning the advertisement deal to Your Mom's House podcast after only a few weeks.[13]

Also in 2019, McDonald's Portugal promoted a sundae for Halloween with advertising that dubbed it "Sundae Bloody Sundae".[14] This generated controversy on social networks in the British-Irish territories due to the name's connotation with the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972. McDonald's issued an apology for "any offense or distress" and withdrew its promotions.[15] "Bloody Sunday" is a name that commemorates the day in 1972 on which 26 unarmed protesters in Derry, Northern Ireland, were shot by British soldiers during "the Troubles", a domestic conflict in Northern Ireland during the late 20th century.[16][17][18] This resulted in 14 deaths. McDonald's said it was intended as a local promotion of Halloween and not intended to insult anyone.[16]

—Viz Top Tip, published May 1989.

—McDonald's advert, 1996.

Racial diversity

In the 1970s, McDonald's began to diversify their target audience towards the back end of the civil rights movement at the time. To modern audiences, the advertising style in this given campaign appears stereotypical and is a clear example of tokenism. However, at the time it was seen as a huge step forward in terms of overcoming racial issues.

In order to appeal to African-American people, McDonald's exclusively used images of African-American people enjoying a McDonald's meal in their ads. They also adopted linguistic features which were "typical" in that particular culture, such as "g-dropping" for example "Makin' it" or "Dinnertimin'".[19] Additionally, McDonald's also introduced the "Get Down" campaign which was a popular dance move, get down, in the African American culture at the time.

As McDonald's was mainly a "white-dominated" agency at the time, it seemed that even though they were attempted to make good with these ad campaigns, they only really achieved appearing "racially naive" and also heavily relied on fraught stereotypes rather than actual information (Charlton McIlwain 2015). [19] Another notion, coined by Tom Burrell (2003:240),[20]