Amsterdam, March 30 – McDonald’s Netherlands, TBWA\NEBOKO and OMD Netherlands are launching a new print and outdoor campaign that proves the informal routes people take to McDonald’s are already mapped out. Not imagined, but discovered: existing shortcuts – unofficial routes people carve out themselves on the way to their nearest restaurant.
The Netherlands is home to thousands of these shortcuts: routes formed by people instinctively choosing the shortest way from A to B. Building on that insight, the team explored whether that same instinct could also be seen in the routes people take towards McDonald’s.
Instead of creating routes, they mapped them. By combining open map data with McDonald’s restaurant locations, they identified existing, unofficial paths that happen to lead directly to the Golden Arches. These shortcuts were then photographed as they appear in their natural surroundings.
“Shortcuts never appear without a reason,” says 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. While we understand the instinct to take the quickest route, arriving safely will always matter more than arriving fast.”
The campaign is rolling out locally across outdoor and print in cities including Almelo, Eindhoven, Venray, Woerden and Lemmer. Each execution features a photographed shortcut that leads to a nearby McDonald’s restaurant.
McDonald’s emphasizes that the campaign is not intended to encourage the use of specific shortcuts or to ignore local rules and regulations.
“From a creative perspective, this is almost the opposite of what we usually do,” says Erik Falke, Executive Creative Director at TBWA\NEBOKO. “The strength of this campaign lies in the fact that we didn’t invent anything. These shortcuts already exist across the country; we simply found them and made them visible.”
