McDonald's UK Bets on Small Changes to Win Back Sceptical Consumers
McDonald's UK's 'Change a little, Change a lot' campaign is a film-led brand platform, created with Leo Burnett UK and published in the United Kingdom in September 2023, that argues incremental improvements to food sourcing and everyday habits accumulate into meaningful progress over time.
The campaign platform itself predates this execution. As reported by Creative Salon, Leo Burnett and McDonald's UK originally launched 'Change a Little, Change a Lot' in October 2021, positioning it as a sustainability-led brand idea anchored in McDonald's UK and Ireland's broader 'Plan for Change' programme, which carries a net-zero emissions ambition by 2040, per mcdonalds.com. The September 2023 iteration, titled 'Keep Up With The Times', represents a continuation and deliberate refinement of that foundation rather than a standalone campaign.
In the United Kingdom, the campaign ran across television, radio, social media, Spotify playlists curated around throwback-era music, and retro-style digital display, deploying a full-funnel media strategy managed by media agency OMD, as reported by Creative Salon. The film assets at the core of the campaign — three in total — use 1990s nostalgia and humour to dramatise how McDonald's food sourcing has evolved across approximately twenty years, inviting audiences to reassess assumptions formed long ago. The 'Beef' film, one of the campaign's primary assets, accumulated more than 158,000 views on YouTube, reflecting meaningful organic reach for a brand-led educational message in a crowded food and drink environment.
Clapboard rates this campaign 63 out of 100, recognising its strategic coherence and cultural awareness while noting room for stronger creative differentiation within the lifestyle and food industry categories.
McDonald's UK identified a specific and measurable audience problem before building its 2023 strategy. Hannah Pain, Head of Marketing for Brand Affinity, Trust and Family at McDonald's UK and Ireland, told LBBonline that the brand's research revealed a significant cohort of British consumers still held opinions of McDonald's formed roughly thirty years earlier, opinions that had not been updated to reflect genuine changes in the brand's sourcing and supply chain practices. That perception lag, not category competition, was the primary strategic target.
The United Kingdom's foodservice market provides the commercial backdrop. UK foodservice sales reached approximately US$66.2 billion in 2023, reflecting continued post-pandemic recovery, according to data from the United States Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service. Within that environment, McDonald's UK operated 1,428 locations in 2023, according to customneon.co.uk, placing it behind Greggs with 2,406 UK locations and Subway with 2,167 UK locations across the same period, per the same source. Where McDonald's competes structurally against those rivals is in average restaurant throughput, drive-thru capability, digital ordering infrastructure, and the breadth of its full-meal offer — advantages that become less valuable if consumer trust in ingredients remains anchored to outdated impressions.
The strategic logic of deploying 1990s nostalgia is therefore precise rather than sentimental. By transporting audiences back to the era when their negative associations were formed, then demonstrating what has changed since, the campaign attempts to close the gap between remembered McDonald's and current McDonald's in a single emotional motion. As reported by Creative Salon, the platform connects directly to McDonald's UK and Ireland's 'Plan for Change' sustainability commitments, giving lifestyle storytelling a structural business rationale rather than treating it as purely expressive brand communication.
Director Tim Godsall helmed two of the 30-second 'Keep Up With The Times' films within the 'Change a little, Change a lot' campaign platform, as reported by Creative Salon. The choice of a director associated with tone-precise comedy and period-accurate visual sensibility reflects the campaign's core creative bet: that humour and nostalgia can make a factual message about supply chain improvement feel human and shareable rather than corporate and defensive.
The campaign's creative execution leans on period-specific aesthetic cues drawn from 1990s British visual culture — wardrobe, production design, and comedic timing calibrated to trigger genuine recognition in audiences who lived through that era. Rather than issuing a corrective statement about food sourcing, the films dramatise the passage of time as something slightly absurd, positioning the consumer's outdated opinion as the punchline rather than the consumer themselves. This approach reduces the risk of alienating the very audience the campaign needs to convert.
Three film assets form the campaign's media spine, with the 'Beef' film serving as a primary vehicle for communicating McDonald's sourcing credentials on YouTube, where it reached more than 158,000 views. The broader media mix, as reported by Creative Salon, extended the creative logic across television and VOD for maximum reach, radio for frequency, social media for engagement, and Spotify throwback playlists alongside retro-style digital display for ambient reinforcement of the nostalgia frame. OMD's full-funnel media architecture ensured that the 1990s creative premise encountered audiences across multiple contexts, compounding the cumulative impression the campaign's own title describes. The integration of channel selection with creative concept — throwback Spotify content sitting alongside throwback-styled films — demonstrates a level of media-creative coherence that elevates execution above simple multi-channel distribution.
McDonald's UK has not published verified campaign-specific performance data for the September 2023 'Keep Up With The Times' execution in the public domain. What is available comes from the campaign's YouTube presence: the 'Beef' film recorded 158,232 views and 132 likes, figures that, while modest for a paid media context, are notable for a brand film making explicit claims about ingredient sourcing — a category of content that typically underperforms entertainment-led advertising on organic metrics.
The structural effectiveness of the campaign rests on several observable foundations. McDonald's UK turnover exceeded £1.8 billion in 2023, according to obesity action scotland.org, demonstrating that the brand maintains substantial commercial scale in the United Kingdom irrespective of the perception gap the campaign targets. The 'Change a little, Change a lot' platform, as reported by Creative Salon, was designed from its 2021 launch as a long-term brand idea rather than a tactical burst, meaning the September 2023 execution functions as compounding brand equity investment rather than a standalone sales lever.
The campaign's connection to McDonald's UK and Ireland's net-zero by 2040 ambition, per mcdonalds.com and Corporate Mcdonalds, provides a sustainability narrative thread that gives the lifestyle messaging long-term structural relevance. As consumer expectations around food industry transparency continue to evolve in the United Kingdom, a campaign that repositions McDonald's as a brand in active, documented progress — rather than a static fast-food institution — addresses a reputational liability with a durable creative platform. Clapboard scores the campaign 63 out of 100, reflecting competent strategic architecture and culturally resonant execution, balanced against the difficulty of measuring attitudinal shift from publicly available data alone.
McDonald's UK's 'Change a little, Change a lot' campaign argues that small, incremental improvements to food sourcing and everyday habits accumulate into significant positive change. Launched as a platform by Leo Burnett in October 2021, its September 2023 execution used 1990s nostalgia to demonstrate approximately two decades of genuine sourcing progress to sceptical British consumers.
Leo Burnett UK created the campaign for McDonald's UK. Media planning and buying was handled by OMD. Director Tim Godsall directed two of the 30-second 'Keep Up With The Times' films, as reported by Creative Salon, bringing a tone-precise comedic and period-accurate visual approach to the 1990s nostalgia concept.
McDonald's UK published the 'Keep Up With The Times' films between September 12 and 14, 2023, in the United Kingdom. The execution extended the 'Change a little, Change a lot' brand platform originally launched with Leo Burnett in October 2021, functioning as a continuation rather than a standalone campaign effort.
McDonald's UK deployed a full-funnel media strategy across television, radio, social media, Spotify throwback-era playlists, retro-style digital display, and YouTube. OMD managed the media architecture. The 'Beef' film on YouTube accumulated more than 158,000 views, as recorded in the campaign's publicly available platform data.
The campaign platform directly supports McDonald's UK and Ireland's 'Plan for Change', which carries a net-zero emissions ambition by 2040, per mcdonalds.com. Creative Salon reported this sustainability framework as a structural foundation of the platform, giving the lifestyle storytelling measurable corporate commitments rather than relying solely on expressive brand communication.
Clapboard rates the McDonald's UK 'Change a little, Change a lot' 2023 campaign 63 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's strategic coherence, culturally resonant nostalgia execution, and long-term platform thinking, balanced against limited publicly available performance data to verify attitudinal or commercial impact in the United Kingdom.
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