How a Web Series Captured the Truth of Working at McDonald’s
With 8,000 employees spread over more than 100 restaurants, McDonald's is one of Denmark's largest youth employers, and with an average age of 19, McDonald's is the first encounter with working life for many young people.
As such an important player in youth employment, the fast food chain also wanted to show how rewarding a job at McDonald’s can be, to make sure it continues to employ the best young talent in the country. So it turned to its creative agency in the region, NORD DDB.
The agency’s answer wasn’t a traditional recruitment campaign, but something much more engaging – a web series that feels at home on YouTube, telling the stories of how everything changes for young people when they first enter the world of work, and so often for the better when that happens at a McDonald’s restaurant.
In the series, viewers meet the newly hired Freja, played by famous Danish actress and influencer Anna Munch, and the manager Jonathan, played by actor Oliver Michelsen. Freja tries to juggle a life with both family commitments, leisure interests and dreams for the future, while the manager Jonathan, despite being only 22 years old, already has a long career behind him The meeting between the two turns things upside down, and suddenly the future looks different than they originally thought.
To find out more about this unusual creative endeavour, LBB’s Alex Reeves speaks to Tim Fremmich Andresen, creative director at NORD DDB.
LBB> When and how did youth employment become a focus for McDonald's Danish advertising?
Tim> McDonald’s in Denmark has always taken great pride in offering a good work experience, especially to young people, who make up the by far biggest group of their workforce. And McDonald’s has been named Danish employer of the year several times. However, it didn’t seem to be widely noticed by the public, so about five years ago we decided to start focusing on it in our communication. That led to the 2020 campaign ‘It Takes More Than Mom Thinks’, where we found a mom of an employee who thought the job was easy and then gave her a chance to work in a restaurant. Where she failed miserably. This had a huge impact on how people saw the work and was well received. Although it wasn’t a recruitment campaign, there was still a major upshot in applicants.
LBB> Building on what you'd done in 2020, what were the business challenges that the brand needed to overcome with this new campaign?
Tim> Having established that the job is hard, McDonald’s now wanted to show that it not only takes more than you think – it also gives you more. So we needed to communicate all the great points such as confidence, structure, responsibility, education, development and team work. In other words, we needed Danes to perceive McDonald's as a good workplace for young people.
LBB> And how did you get to the solution being a web series like this? It doesn't seem like an approach that's particularly in vogue for advertising today but I think it works this time!
Tim> As mentioned, there were a lot of USPs McDonald’s wanted to communicate, which would be hard to fit into a regular campaign. And on top of that – getting those messages to young people in traditional media would be almost impossible, so we had to try new ways to get it out. We were seeing YouTube series created by up-and-coming directors building momentum among the target audience. So if we could make a series that felt like it was made with the same tone and without trying to sell McDonald’s, then maybe we could actually make something people wanted to watch.
I will say that there was a lot of back and forth to get the idea approved. It would mean shooting for at least two to three times longer, completely different workflows, more budget, less control over the creative, new media approach, a pushed go-live date and so on. A lot of meetings and phone calls, but credit to the client for going for it. We've been partners for more than 15 years so there is definitely a lot of mutual trust and respect.
LBB> How did the issues / stories get fleshed out? What were the big discussions at that stage?
Tim> The team had done a lot of work building a story, getting around everything the campaign had to communicate, but we kept coming back to a feeling of this being made by ad people. So we reached out early to the director, Anna Sørrig, who was used to working with both fiction and advertising (she had recently done a McDonald’s chef campaign with us). She teamed up with a script writer and they rewrote everything in a tone that made it much more like a fictional series.
There were a lot of talks with McDonald’s about whether we would land the messages, but at the same time we all knew that if we didn’t stay true to the format, we would just be wasting money and people wouldn’t watch it.
LBB> Can you talk us through some of the decisions made in casting and pre production?
Tim> This was fun. The creatives – Chris Vejlø and Emma Søgaard – had this idea that we should not just get good actors, we should go for those who had been in similar web series that the target group knew. And if some were popular influencers on top that would be amazing. Lo and behold, we got Anna Munch as a lead who has been in similar series (when I showed an early cut to my 15-year-old son he recognised her instantly – which I hadn’t…) and she is huge on TikTok and Instagram. Our other lead Oliver Michelsen is also well-known from those types of series. And then the creatives reached out to a friend at Universal who represents Salomon Stampe, a young actor and TikTokker, who is also an aspiring musician. We got him to write the title track with the script writer, which meant that he was promoting both his song and the series as an influencer. And as always we try to include as many actual McDoanld’s employees as extras to make sure the vibe in the restaurant feels genuine.
LBB> What were the defining features of the way the films were made?
Tim> Authentic stories were important. Our strategist Jesper Schjølin conducted a lot of interviews with current and former employees – new hires, managers, HR, the CEO and so on. Anyone from NORD DDB who works with McDonald’s has been in store training, and the creatives went for another round. So a lot of the script is inspired by true stories. From small things like friendly banter where new employees are being asked to count fries to bigger stories about having to justify why you work at McDonald’s. In that way we tried to stay true to reality, while adding some dramatic flavour to ensure enough hooks to keep people watching.
Throughout the pre and post production we also had a lot of talks with OMD, who we have a close relationship with when it comes to McDonald’s. We talked a lot about how to promote the series, because it is harder getting people to watch long form. So we made sure we agreed on all types of content we needed, in order for them to optimise it all. We also had a lot of talks with Google’s creative team to utilise their expertise. Both on how to hook people on long formats, but also how to get people to watch more episodes. And that ended up being a big part of how we did the edit.
LBB> How have young Danes responded so far?
Tim> We haven’t done the evaluation yet, so it’s early days, but it’s been good. More than 1.1 million views (which is about a fifth of the population). There’s of course a drop off from episode to episode, but we still got more than 25% to watch episode 2 and 10% watched all the way to the end. That’s more than 20 minutes watched, which is a lot of people spending a lot of time with the brand.
We’ve seen a lot of positive comments, the paid social has performed better than normal, and people seem to like it. We’ve also gotten some unexpected coverage such as from the biggest morning show on the most grown-up national radio station as well as a lot of PR outside Denmark, which is crazy since it’s all in Danish. And we’ve been asked to guest teach using the case at a big high school, who reached out a week after the series went live.
LBB> Are there any details or small aspects that you find particularly satisfying in the finished series?
Tim> You know, when we premiered it at McDonald’s Denmark annual kick-off, we got so much positive feedback. I overheard someone saying “that’s so you” to a colleague when we showed the counting fries scene. People came up to us during the night to say how we nailed a lot of what goes on and how they felt seen, which was a proud moment. I am so proud of everyone involved that we’ve managed to make something that employees put their stamp of approval on. If nothing else, we know we made a true testament to what you get when working at McDonald’s.
