Watch the full ad here:

Gareth's thoughts:

Part 1:

"McDonald’s “Raise Your Arches” was the one that didn’t get away for me.

“Hey McDonald’s, fancy showing a 60-second ad without so much as a

sesame seed in sight?”

“You do? Blimey”

As a writer you don’t get many of these unicorn moments, taking an iconic brand and making an iconic ad for it.

So, what made it iconic? It was partly showing zero product. Not a fry, not a bun, not even a gherkin cameo. Also, it didn’t have a single line of dialogue or voice over. It took a brave client to green light a 60 second facial expression. But mostly, for me, it landed because of timing.

We were scuttling back out of Covid, reluctantly re-acquainting ourselves with office small talk and colleagues we’d only seen as postage-stamp heads on Zoom. Then along comes this ad, capturing the secret rebellions, the mini conspiracies that we missed from our pre-pandemic day-to-day. Two raised eyebrows standing in for two fingers up to conformity. The ultimate “sod it” moment.

And crucially, it was fun.

All the way through, it refused to take itself too seriously. The music was spot on, playful, not to mention the soundtrack to the most iconic of all movie bunk offs. And, oh yes, the fact that Edgar Wright agreed with us on that made it feel like a heist we’d all pulled off.

Every brand craves recognition.

McDonald’s found it on everyone’s face."

Mark's thoughts:

Sometimes all you see is the spark of an idea the bare bones, and it

takes time for it to become complete, robust enough to present to a

client.

Rarely, very rarely, you see something so complete, so perfect, that all

you need to do is help it get out into the world. Raise Your Arches was

the latter: perfect from the first script.

Some small discussions internally.

Do we put product in? No.

Do we put a restaurant at the end? No.

Music? Perfect, Yello was written into the first script.

Director choice? Obviously had to be Edgar Wright. Again, presented

with the first script, and we got him too.

Our clients loved it from the get-go and even helped by buying the track

early, locking it in before another brand could. The edit process had one

nervy moment, but that’s history, there was bound to be something.

There’s an old expression that ‘great ideas have many fathers’… this

one has just one. Marvellous.