McDonald's Proper Way campaign, created by IW Group and Tiger House Films in 2025, launches McCrispy Strips across the United States with multigenerational
McDonald's Proper Way Puts Asian American Family at the Heart of McCrispy Strips
McDonald's Proper Way is a 2025 US food and drink campaign created by IW Group and Tiger House Films that introduces McCrispy Strips and Creamy Chili Dip through the lens of an Asian American family meal, using multigenerational humour and cultural warmth to anchor a permanent new chicken tender menu item in the fast food category.
The campaign launched in spot markets across the United States in May 2025, timed to coincide with the nationwide rollout of McCrispy Strips on May 5, 2025, as confirmed by Corporate Mcdonalds. McCrispy Strips represent McDonald's first permanent US menu addition in several years, according to corporate.mcdonalds.com, making the launch commercially significant beyond a typical limited-time offer. The strips feature all-white meat chicken with crispy golden-brown breading seasoned with black pepper and are served in three or four-piece configurations, accompanied by the brand-new Creamy Chili Dip — a savory, sweet, and tangy sauce developed specifically for the product. Customers may also pair the strips with McDonald's existing signature sauces.
The single film asset at the centre of the campaign, titled Proper Way, frames the McCrispy Strips not merely as a product but as a dinner-table conversation starter. A mother instructs her three children on how to enjoy the chicken tenders while simultaneously revealing that her own preferred method extends well beyond the Creamy Chili Dip. The presence of actor Tzi Ma — known internationally for Rush Hour, The Farewell, and Mulan — as a grandfather who appears to nap theatrically through the family's banter gives the spot an immediately recognisable cultural reference point for Asian American audiences. The choice to launch through IW Group, an agency with deep expertise in multicultural marketing in the United States, signals that McDonald's positioned this campaign as a targeted cultural engagement rather than a general-market broadcast push.
IW Group anchors the Proper Way campaign in a specific and well-observed consumer truth. Asian American family meals carry an unspoken authority structure in which the mother's food preferences and preparation methods are treated as definitive — and therefore ripe for affectionate subversion. By building the entire creative premise around a mother who insists there are many ways to enjoy McCrispy Strips, the campaign positions the Creamy Chili Dip as the official starting point while leaving room for personal discovery, which mirrors how McDonald's structures its condiment offering in practice.
The fast food category in the United States is intensely competitive. Competitors including Popeyes and Chick-fil-A have established strong brand equities specifically around chicken, making differentiation through product alone difficult for any new entrant to the chicken tender segment. McDonald's McCrispy Strips arrive as a permanent menu item rather than a limited-time offer, a distinction corporate.mcdonalds.com emphasises, which signals long-term category intent rather than a promotional test. McDonald's reported systemwide sales approaching what fortune.com described as a dominant position in the global QSR landscape, giving the brand distribution reach that challenger chicken brands cannot match in the United States.
The spot-market rollout strategy used for Proper Way is itself a strategic signal. Rather than saturating national broadcast inventory, McDonald's and IW Group concentrated spend in markets with higher densities of Asian American consumers, maximising cultural resonance per media dollar. This approach allows the campaign to function as genuine community storytelling in priority markets while the product itself achieves nationwide availability — a split between targeted cultural marketing and broad commercial distribution that reflects mature multicultural strategy in the United States food and drink category.
Director Patrick Tom helmed the Proper Way film for Tiger House Films, bringing a sensibility suited to the material's balance of warmth and comic timing. The production required a performance dynamic in which four family members, a mother and three children, sustain charming banter while a fifth, the grandfather played by Tzi Ma, executes a sustained physical comedy beat — his apparently peaceful napping at the dining table, which the script frames as a deliberate impression of a Weekend at Bernie's scenario. Holding that comic undercurrent without tipping into parody while keeping the product at the centre of the action demands precise directorial control of tempo and framing.
The creative team at IW Group assembled for the campaign reflects the agency's senior commitment to the project. Telly Wong, the agency's SVP and Chief Content Officer, served as both copywriter and creative lead alongside copywriter Sophia Zolan, with Jana Viray as Art Director. Sharon Gao produced, with Hugh Bacher serving as Director of Production and Executive Producer, and Sid Kim as Head of Production. Chief Momentum Officer Nita Song and Chief Connectivity Officer Bill Imada rounded out the IW Group leadership attached to the campaign, and account leadership came from VP and Group Account Director Suzie Bao.
The film's visual language favours the familiarity of a domestic dining table rather than the constructed perfection of a studio food shoot. This choice reinforces the campaign's central argument — that McCrispy Strips and Creamy Chili Dip belong in real family meals, not aspirational ones. Tzi Ma's presence adds an immediate layer of cultural credibility that functions independently of dialogue, allowing his character to communicate volumes through stillness and timing alone, which is itself a craft decision as much as a casting one.
Verified third-party performance data for the Proper Way campaign is limited at the time of writing. The campaign asset accumulated approximately 1,934 views and five likes in its initial period of availability, according to publicly observable upload metrics. No trade press reviews from Ad Age, Adweek, Campaign, The Drum, or Contagious specifically covering the Proper Way commercial have been confirmed, and no awards entries or recognitions across Cannes Lions, the Effies, One Show, D&AD, the Clios, the Webby Awards, or WARC have been verified for this campaign.
Structurally, the campaign is well-constructed for its stated purpose. The use of Tzi Ma provides instant cultural recognisability, and the multigenerational family dynamic gives the Asian American target audience a specific, accurate reflection of a shared experience rather than a generalised one. The Creamy Chili Dip receives clear product integration without dominating the narrative, and the mother's declaration that there are many proper ways to enjoy the strips creates a memorable, repeatable line that functions as both a punchline and a product message. The spot-market rollout approach concentrates impressions where they are most likely to generate genuine cultural resonance.
Where the campaign shows limitation is in its relatively modest media footprint — a single film asset deployed in spot markets does not create the sustained cultural conversation that a broader content ecosystem might achieve. The Clapboard Score for Proper Way is 59 out of 100, reflecting a campaign that is creatively sound and culturally specific but constrained in measurable reach and documented impact at this stage of its life cycle.
Proper Way is a 2025 McDonald's US campaign created by IW Group and Tiger House Films. It introduces McCrispy Strips and Creamy Chili Dip through an Asian American family meal scene featuring actor Tzi Ma as a theatrically napping grandfather, using multigenerational humour to anchor the product launch across spot markets in the United States.
McCrispy Strips are McDonald's first permanent US menu addition in several years, according to corporate.mcdonalds.com. They became available nationwide on May 5, 2025, featuring all-white meat chicken with black pepper seasoning and are served with Creamy Chili Dip in three or four-piece servings across participating US locations.
IW Group created Proper Way for McDonald's, with Tiger House Films handling production. Director Patrick Tom led the film. The IW Group creative team included SVP and Chief Content Officer Telly Wong as copywriter, Art Director Jana Viray, and copywriter Sophia Zolan, with Suzie Bao as Group Account Director.
Tzi Ma is a Chinese American actor known for Rush Hour, The Farewell, and Mulan. In Proper Way, he plays the grandfather who appears to sleep through a family meal. His cultural credibility and comic timing make him an immediately recognisable figure for the campaign's Asian American target audience in the United States.
Clapboard assigns Proper Way a score of 59 out of 100. The campaign earns marks for cultural specificity, credible casting, and clear product integration. Its score is constrained by a limited single-asset media footprint and the absence of verified third-party performance data or documented industry award recognition at this stage.
Proper Way does not compete directly on product claims against Popeyes or Chick-fil-A. Instead, McDonald's uses cultural targeting through IW Group to reach Asian American consumers in spot markets, leveraging the brand's nationwide distribution and McCrispy Strips' permanent menu status as structural advantages in the US fast food chicken category.
.webp)
Creative Collaboration Platform: The Backbone of Modern Creative WorkWhat is a creative collaboration platform?Clapboard defines a creative collaboration platform as the operational core for today’s distributed creative teams. This is not a collection of digital collaboration tools stitched together; Clapboard’s system
Understanding the Creative Production MarketplaceWhat is a Creative Production Marketplace?Clapboard defines a creative production marketplace as a structured ecosystem where brands, agencies, and production talent converge to execute video, advertising, and branded content at scale. Unlike the legacy agency or freelanREAD FULL ARTICLE
The Urgent Need for a Creative Production Operating SystemWhy Traditional Creative Production Models Break DownClapboard sees the creative production landscape shifting under pressure. Content velocity is no longer a buzzword—it’s a mandate. Modern advertising demands relentless output across dozens of channels, each wREAD FULL ARTICLE
.jpg&w=256&q=75)
