McDonaldland

McDonald's | A Trip to McDonaldland

How we reignited nostalgia and rebuilt a legacy IP as a living cultural universe

OBJECTIVE

McDonald’s set out to reintroduce McDonaldland to a new generation—without losing the emotional equity longtime fans grew up with. The challenge wasn’t awareness. It was relevance. McDonaldland lived in memory, not in culture. To resonate with Gen Z, it couldn’t feel archival. It needed to feel current, participatory, and physically real.

Our mandate: Transform a nostalgic brand world into an immersive, IRL destination embedded directly into the cultural moments shaping summer—music, fashion, sports, and creator ecosystems.

STRATEGY

We approached McDonaldland not as a campaign, but as a scalable world.

Cultural Insight: Gen Z engages brands through participation. Nostalgia only works when it becomes remixable, shareable, and socially native.

Platform Thinking: Rather than a single flagship activation, we designed a modular, multi-city tour model—placing McDonaldland directly inside existing cultural gatherings.

System Design:

• Build flexible, modular, transportable McDonaldland “regions” adaptable to each stop

• Integrate character-driven storytelling across physical and digital touchpoints

• Design environments optimized for UGC capture and creator amplification

• Turn experiential into the campaign’s primary content engine

The tour wasn’t just experiential support. It was the social backbone of the campaign.

EXECUTION

A four-city cultural tour embedded McDonaldland into summer’s most influential touchpoints:

• ThriftCon — Denver

• Breakaway Music Festival — Grand Rapids

• NASCAR Coke Zero Sugar 400 — Daytona

• Breakaway Music Festival — Worcester

Each stop featured fully immersive McDonaldland environments—custom-built regions with character appearances, sampling stations, photo moments, and interactive storytelling.

PacSun Cultural Commerce Integration

We extended the PacSun x McDonald’s collaboration with an exclusive pop-up retail experience at ThriftCon, offering early-access drops, giveaways, and tour-specific merchandise.

$32,000 in PacSun revenue generated in just two days.

Snapchat AR World-Building

A custom Snapchat AR mirror inside the “Apple Pie Orchard” transformed fans into McDonaldland characters.

• 4,000+ fans engaged with the AR filter

• 2,000+ videos captured and shared

Creator-Led Amplification

14 creators activated the lore online, driving IRL attendance and digital reach.

• 4.9M+ potential creator reach

• 34+ social posts

Every stop featured all four McDonaldland characters—fueling UGC, strengthening nostalgia cues, and giving the world its own cultural gravity.

RESULTS

• 7.2M social impressions

• 17.5M organic & experiential earned social reach

• 29M total experiential reach

• 53% of all campaign social content driven by the experiential footprint

• 13,800 in-person fan engagements

• 9,300 product samples distributed

Experiential didn’t support the campaign. It became the campaign.