In it's 50th year in the UK, McDonald’s doubles down on emotional creativity and marketing scale with Leo Burnett UK leaning into crave psychology.
McDonald’s UK has launched a new permanent menu item, the Big Arch, a two-patty burger designed not just to satisfy, but to inspire hunger at scale. The Big Arch represents McDonald’s first major burger platform introduction in the UK since the McPlant in 2021, and one of the brand’s purposeful moves toward reshaping its core menu.
Created to meet what the brand is calling “Big McDonald’s Hunger,” the launch is backed by a multi-channel campaign from Leo Burnett UK that spans television, cinema, paid and organic social media, outdoor advertising, CRM, and in-store activations.
The Big Arch is a statement of brand intent, executed with both emotional intelligence and creative restraint.
“The Big Arch is the most exciting burger we’ve launched in a generation,” said Ben Fox, SVP and Chief Marketing Officer, McDonald’s UK & Ireland. “It’s a two-handed, multi-napkin experience.”
A cultural and commercial inflection point
McDonald’s has been trading in the UK for over 50 years. The Big Arch reflects a strategic shift. With the worst of the inflation crisis behind British consumers, but discretionary spending still tight, the brand is betting on comfort-led indulgence rather than cost-cutting.
While McDonald’s UK remains one of the company’s most mature and digitally advanced markets, recent quarters have shown signs of consumer fatigue and slowing growth, making the Big Arch a timely addition for emotional re-engagement and trade-up behaviour.
Yes, McDonald’s could have leaned into a healthier, half-fat patty perched on a lettuce leaf. But perhaps the data is telling them something else entirely.
The burger, which includes 100% British and Irish beef, cheddar, crispy onions, pickles, lettuce, and a new proprietary sauce, is designed to feel both familiar and elevated.
It has already been introduced in parts of Europe, with the UK campaign framed as a cultural takeover, appearing across events like Glastonbury Festival, the Women’s Euros, and on high-traffic commuter routes.
A creative designed to move both appetite and memory
What sets the Big Arch apart isn’t just its scale, but the sophistication of its creative platform. Developed by Leo Burnett UK, the campaign is a lesson in controlled maximalism: bold type, clean colour fields, sharp visuals.
“From boardrooms to festival grounds, this campaign shows how a simple fan truth can move people... and tables,” said James Millers and Andrew Long, Executive Creative Directors at Leo Burnett UK.
At the centre of the campaign is “Rumble,” a 30-second film directed by Eric Wareheim, which dramatises hunger through a universally familiar sound: the stomach growl. That sound, of course, becomes the campaign’s anchor. Used in geo-targeted retargeting, customers are exposed to the ad and hear the rumble again as they walk past a McDonald’s location.
It’s a simple, effective and humorous use of associative conditioning, using sound, location, and repetition to create a physical trigger.
Appetite by design
Leo Burnett’s art direction leans heavily on scale and simplicity. The typeface used across OOH placements is oversized and unapologetic, designed for instant cognitive anchoring. “BIG MCDONALD’S HUNGER” reads less like a slogan, more like a public service announcement. It’s saying, ‘forget the Boots meal deal, keep walking.’
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Meanwhile, the product photography is crisp, clinical, and symmetrical. Every ingredient is visible, every edge clean. The visual language takes cues from luxury fashion product shots or direct-to-consumer tech launches, presenting the burger as a constructed object of desire rather than just a food item.
The brand’s palette, too, signals restraint: blocks of yellow and white dominate, with minimal use of McDonald’s traditional red. It’s a colour system that suggests scale and modernity, without crowding the message.
The campaign activates several key psychological levers:
- Simplicity to lower cognitive load
- Sound association to prime physical response
- Visual clarity to elevate perceived quality
- Familiar ritual to create emotional return
Fast food as mood management
Underneath the media buy and messaging is a broader shift: the return of emotional appetite in brand strategy. In contrast to the calorie-counting era of the early 2020s, the Big Arch is unashamedly big, not only in portion, but in purpose.
“It gives customers exactly what they’ve been asking for,” said McDonald’s CMO Ben Fox. “As a Big Mac fan, it takes a lot to tempt me away from my favourite, but the Big Arch and its signature sauce certainly does.”
And yes, somewhere in a Soho salad bar, this new menu item is likely being shouted down. “Oh, diabetes, health problems. Fifty years of fast food.” But let’s be honest: not everyone wants to spend their lunch break at Bibi’s nibbling hummus and rocket. Sometimes, the craving wins.
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That sauce, teased through PR content, influencer storytelling, and TikTok ‘guess-the-flavour’ drops, becomes a social mechanic. It’s less about secrecy, more about interactive ownership, inviting customers to play a role in the burger’s mythology.
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A future classic?
Commercially, the Big Arch is unlikely to undercut value menus. Instead, it functions as a margin-positive SKU, pitched at customers willing to trade up for a deeper reward. What will matter now is operational consistency: whether staff in every McDonald’s, from London to Edinburgh, treat the Big Arch as more than just another burger. Because for a future classic to stick, franchise or not, it has to feel like the hero every single time.
Credits
Client: McDonald’s UK & Ireland
Chief Marketing Officer: Ben Fox
Advertising Agency: Leo Burnett UK
Chief Creative Officer: Mark Elwood
Executive Creative Directors: Andrew Long, James Millers
Strategy: Tom Sussman, Ipeknaz Erel
Creatives: Zoe Davies, Kerry Donelly
Creative Director of Design: Dave Allen
Director (TVC): Eric Wareheim, Prettybird
Post-production: Black Kite
Media: OMD
PR: RED Consultancy
CRM: TMW
Audio: String & Tins, 750 mph
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