Creative Criminals

The Chicago River was first dyed green in 1962 to coincide with the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Nowadays each year on parade day, a crew led by Mike Butler uses about 40 pounds of dye to colour the river green. Depending on the currents the river will stay green for about five hours. This was a perfect way to promote McDonald’s seasonal green Shamrock Shake.

Today the 21st Winter Olympics start in Vancouver Canada. Four years ago it was held in Torino, Italy. At that time McDonald’s was an official sponsor and this advertisement was made for that occasion. It looks like the Golden Arches of the Fast-Food chain but they are actually the front part of the skis.

McDonald’s Germany continues to win awards for this outdoor bus stop advertisement, “Freshness Box Salad”. A billboard was transformed into a fresh salad and condensation leaving the unmistakable logo of McDonald’s behind.

This ambient ad was placed at Wiener Platz, a place known for its food markets, in Haidhausen, a district of Munich. The outdoor ad won a Silver Outdoor Lion at Cannes International Advertising Festival in June 2008, and a Gold award at the Montreux International Advertising and Media Festival in April 2009

The McDonald’s giant interactive LED billboard at London’s Piccadilly Circus was created to do more than just sell hamburgers, It is an interactive poster at one of the busiest placed in London (2,8 million people that pass it every month).



Using a series of 40 second iconic still and moving images, people can take pictures of them with our poster as a backdrop and create a fun photo of them appearing to wear or do something.

A steam machine was built to fit inside a bus shelter. Periodic bursts of steam revealed a hidden message that communicated a free coffee promotion at McDonald’s. This one would fit perfectly in the nice collection of Creative bus stop advertisements Rindert made some time ago.

McDonald’s promotes its french fries, cheese burger and Big Mac by using barcodes in a very clever way in Germany.

Imagine the news paper boy trows you one of these in your front yard. I think it’s a pretty cool idea, too bad it won’t work like this in the news stands because without the wrapping paper it’s just not that good.

Apparently McDonald’s offers free wifi connection at their fast-food restaurants and to promote it they used the symbol of wifi. They cleverly used their fries to recreate the symbol. But does this mean that McDonald’s fries are slack?

Update: Apparently this ad was already made by RT&A, Mexico in 2006 for McDonald’s.

As every restaurants have their closing hours. We feel that this is a great opportunity for McDonald’s to communicate the new 24 hours service. McDonald’s places a night image of its restaurant onto the pull-down shutter of various restaurants. Once the shutter is pulled down after the restaurant’s operating hours, passer bys will see an image of a McDonald’s in late hours. This is to deliver the message that while other restaurants are closed, one can enjoy good meal at McDonald’s 24 hours a day.

Yesterday I posted an ambient about a lamppost used by Mac Donald’s. Today I received this also very nice ambient made for Mac Donald’s regarding an advertisement for the same free coffee.