Marketing maven McDonald’s is getting good at the whole outdoor advertising business, if it hasn’t already. Flaunting these ambient stunts for McDonald’s New Zealand, the Golden Arches is proving yet again it is as great outdoors as on print and TV.

Moving away from the all-too obvious texts on them, a shake by itself at these speed bumps denote an altogether different shake, that of McDonald’s Shaker Fries. It’s never the coincidence the speed bumps are strategically situated on one’s way to the drive-through window. Those little earthquakes do have a catch, obviously.

McShaker Fries are those that come with a sachet of seasoning and a specially designed McShaker Bag. Basically, the fast-food eater throws the fries and the spices together in the bag, whose opening is then twisted tight, and jerks it.

Mickey D’s, of course, is hoping for a different kind of convulsion—the frenetic sound of cash registers going ka-ching. McShaker Fries, which is called Shake Shake Fries in India, the Philippines, and Hong Kong, may give the fastfood giant the shakeup it needs in this kind of economy.

Maybe McDonald’s is sharpening its radical edges, but on a global basis, it is hardly the vanguard. These outdoor ads are wading in waters already swum, for one, by Volvo.

Memac Ogilvy & Mather played on the same idea for the car maker last year, which then released new models with nifty suspension. At the entrance of Volvo dealership lots in the UAE, the agency set up fake speed bumps made of soft sponge. Incoming vehicles instinctively slowed down for the dupe, then came across a sign that says “Never feel a bump again with Volvo’s Active Four-c Suspension.”

Much of the same elements were carried over by JWT for a breast examination campaign by Kuwait’s Taiba Hospital. No-brainer analogies can apparently be made between speed humps and the lumps on one’s humps, so to speak. Mounted on the hospital driveway, JWT’s speed bumps need the same clincher, a road sign.

Miraculously, the number of women having their breasts checked at the hospital increased from 60 to twice a hundred. Hopefully, this was lesson learnt well by McDonald’s. For sales do pick up speed, not slow down, from publicity vehicles like humps.

Advertising Agency: DDB New Zealand
Executive Creative Director: Toby Talbot
Creative Group Head: Paul Hankinson
Art Director / Copywriter: Pete Thompson
Account Services: Callum Walker, Zoe Alden
Client Executives: Robert Bowring, Justin Watson

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