ARCHIVEM&S Brings Back Mark Wright and Spencer Matthews for Christmas 2024
How M&S Used Narrative Familiarity to Own a Christmas Moment in 2024 M&S's "Our Favourite Duo Are...
How McDonald's UK Made Christmas Feel Like a McDonald's Moment
McDonald's UK's 'Fancy a McDonald's this Christmas?' is a 90-second holiday film created by Leo Burnett UK and released in November 2023, extending the brand's 'Raise Your Arches' platform into the festive season by using a wordless raised-eyebrow gesture to position McDonald's as a natural, warmly familiar part of Christmas life in the United Kingdom.
The campaign premiered on 11 November 2023 during two high-profile broadcast moments: ITV's The Voice and Channel 4's Terminator: Dark Fate, according to reporting by Advanced Television. A same-day cinema release placed the film alongside 20th-anniversary screenings of Love Actually, a calculated alignment with one of the United Kingdom's most beloved Christmas cultural touchstones. The dual broadcast and cinema premiere strategy ensured the film entered public consciousness at scale from its first day of exposure, reaching audiences across multiple viewing contexts simultaneously.
The campaign's central creative mechanic required no dialogue. A raised eyebrow — the signature gesture of the 'Raise Your Arches' platform launched earlier in 2023 — functions as a universal, wordless invitation from one person to another: shall we go to McDonald's? Applied to a Christmas setting, the gesture reframes McDonald's not as a fallback option but as a deliberate, joyful choice within the busy and emotionally layered landscape of the UK festive season. The film's montage structure, as noted in Clapboard's editorial analysis, presents a series of festive vignettes in which the eyebrow exchange appears across different social and family contexts, broadening the campaign's demographic reach without fragmenting its emotional core. The soundtrack, Van Halen's 'Jump,' was reported by Creative Review as a deliberate tonal choice, lending the film energy and nostalgia in equal measure. Across its initial release, the film accumulated over 89,000 views and 457 likes on hosted platforms, per Clapboard's archive data.
McDonald's UK held the position of the United Kingdom's number-one fast-food establishment at the time of the campaign's release. According to Kantar, the brand recorded approximately 40% growth in visitor frequency among its core UK audience in the period leading into 2023, underscoring its structural dominance in a competitive quick-service restaurant landscape. That landscape is substantial: the UK quick-service restaurant market was forecast at US$34.07 billion in 2024, rising to US$44.01 billion by 2029 at a compound annual growth rate of 5.25%, according to Research and Markets. A separate estimate cited by QSR Media places the sector's CAGR from 2023 onward at 5.67%, reflecting consistent analyst confidence in UK fast-food demand despite broader cost-of-living pressures on UK consumers.
The burger segment, McDonald's core category, represented the largest cuisine segment in the UK quick-service market by value in 2023, accounting for approximately 30.86% share, according to Research and Markets. McDonald's UK operated approximately 1,382 outlets across the United Kingdom as of January 2023, per QSR Media, placing it well ahead of its two nearest rivals. KFC UK operated approximately 1,005 outlets in the same period, while Burger King UK operated approximately 517, according to the same source. This outlet density is both a logistical asset and a brand-perception signal: McDonald's is, by physical presence alone, the most accessible quick-service option in the United Kingdom at Christmas, when consumers are time-poor and geographically dispersed across family visits and social occasions.
The strategic insight underpinning 'Fancy a McDonald's this Christmas?' is rooted in this accessibility reality. Rather than competing with premium Christmas food advertising — the register occupied by supermarket campaigns from Tesco, Sainsbury's, and Marks and Spencer — McDonald's UK and Leo Burnett UK repositioned the brand as a participant in Christmas life rather than an alternative to it. The raised-eyebrow mechanic, carried over from the 'Raise Your Arches' platform, provided creative continuity while the Christmas context expanded its emotional register into warmth, familiarity, and collective permission.
Director Shannon Murphy helmed the 90-second film for production company Smuggler, as documented by Creative Review and Creative Salon. Murphy's background in character-driven narrative — she is known for precise, emotionally nuanced direction — was well-suited to a film whose entire communicative weight rests on a single physical gesture performed by multiple characters across different festive scenarios. The montage format, confirmed in Clapboard's archive record, demanded that each scene establish its emotional context rapidly and legibly, making casting, performance direction, and editing rhythm the primary craft levers available to the creative team.
The creative leadership at Leo Burnett UK brought considerable seniority to the project. Chief Creative Officer Chaka Sobhani and Executive Creative Director Mark Elwood oversaw the work, with Creative Director Emma Brooke shaping the film's individual scenes and character dynamics, as credited by Creative Review. Creatives Angus Crombie and Drew Davies developed the campaign concept under the partnership of James Millers and Andrew Long, both Creative Partners at Leo Burnett UK, per the same source. Agency Producer Graeme Light managed the production pipeline, with Lucy Gossage serving as producer on the Smuggler side.
The decision to use Van Halen's 'Jump' as the film's soundtrack was reported by Creative Review as integral to the tonal balance the team sought. The track carries an immediate sense of collective uplift — its chorus functions as an implicit echo of the eyebrow gesture's invitation — while its cultural familiarity across generations reinforced the campaign's intent to speak to UK families broadly rather than to a narrowly defined demographic. A Snapchat filter activation, reported by The Drum, extended the film's central gesture into social media, allowing audiences to perform the raised-eyebrow invitation themselves and linking the digital activation directly to the film's costume and visual language. Michelle Graham-Clare, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for McDonald's UK and Ireland, oversaw the campaign at the client level, as credited by Creative Review. The Drum's Amy Houston described the resulting film as landing with notable emotional clarity for a fast-food Christmas advertisement.
No single performance metric defines the effectiveness of 'Fancy a McDonald's this Christmas?' more plainly than its System1 score. The film achieved a rating of 4.1 stars, making it McDonald's UK's highest-scoring Christmas advertisement of the decade at the time of reporting, according to Marketing Week. System1 testing of 150 UK consumers returned a brand recognition score of 98%, against a category average of 91%, according to The Media Angel. The emotional-intensity score reached 1.73 out of 3, compared with a category average of 1.26 per the same source, indicating that the film generated measurably stronger affective response than the typical food and drink advertisement in the United Kingdom at the same period.
Happiness was recorded among 41% of respondents in System1 testing, against a category average of 38%, according to The Media Angel. These figures collectively suggest that the creative decision to forgo dialogue in favour of a universally legible physical gesture did not diminish emotional connection — it amplified it, at least within the testing sample. The film's System1 'Spike' rating, which measures short-term sales activation potential, was separately noted by Marketing Week as a positive result, though precise figures were not disclosed in publicly available reporting.
The campaign's Clapboard Score of 59 out of 100 reflects a work that performs robustly on emotional metrics and brand linkage while leaving room for development in areas of cultural distinctiveness and long-term platform evolution beyond the 'Raise Your Arches' mechanic. The broadcast premiere strategy — simultaneous placement on ITV and Channel 4 on 11 November 2023, per Advanced Television — ensured that the System1 testing results were matched by meaningful reach at launch.
'Fancy a McDonald's this Christmas?' is a 90-second Christmas film created by Leo Burnett UK for McDonald's UK in 2023. It extends the brand's 'Raise Your Arches' platform into the festive season using a wordless raised-eyebrow gesture. The film premiered on ITV and Channel 4 simultaneously on 11 November 2023, per Advanced Television.
The film scored 4.1 stars on System1, making it McDonald's UK's highest-scoring Christmas advertisement of the decade at the time of reporting, according to Marketing Week. Brand recognition reached 98% among 150 tested UK consumers, against a category average of 91%, per The Media Angel.
Shannon Murphy directed the film for production company Smuggler, as documented by Creative Review. Murphy worked alongside Leo Burnett UK's Chief Creative Officer Chaka Sobhani, Executive Creative Director Mark Elwood, and Creative Director Emma Brooke, with Creative Partners James Millers and Andrew Long overseeing the project.
'Raise Your Arches' is McDonald's UK's brand platform, launched earlier in 2023, built around a raised-eyebrow gesture as a wordless invitation to visit McDonald's. As reported by Creative Salon, the 2023 Christmas campaign adapted this mechanic directly into a festive context rather than functioning as a standalone creative reset.
The film premiered on 11 November 2023 during ITV's The Voice and Channel 4's Terminator: Dark Fate, according to Advanced Television. A same-day cinema release placed the advertisement alongside 20th-anniversary screenings of Love Actually, extending its reach beyond broadcast television on its first day.
The McDonald's UK 'Fancy a McDonald's this Christmas?' campaign holds a Clapboard Score of 59 out of 100. This reflects strong performance on emotional resonance and brand recognition metrics while indicating scope for further development in cultural distinctiveness and long-term creative platform extension beyond the existing 'Raise Your Arches' mechanic.
.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
