In-house agencies: we’re lovin’ it

The world’s largest hamburger fast-food restaurant, McDonald’s, has 3,200 restaurants across 117 countries and serves 58 million customers a day. Each customer interaction, regardless of culture, rings with “I’m Lovin’ It,” punctuated by the Golden Arches.
The squeaky-clean, family-based values, menu standards, product delivery, look and attitude remain the same worldwide, comprising the heart and soul of the brand. A brand that nearly 80 years ago, launched a revolution in the restaurant industry, and today, is poised to do the same for marketing and advertising agencies.

Brothers, Richard and Maurice McDonald, opened the very first McDonald’s in San Bernardino, California. The McDonald brothers understood that customers wanted fast service with consistent quality at an affordable price. Inspired by Henry Ford’s assembly line innovations in manufacturing, they applied this concept to their kitchens, forever changing the restaurant industry.
McDonald’s grew to a global behemoth, and so did its marketing budget. The brand is committed to a “glocal” marketing strategy, maintaining the core uniformity of the brand, but allowing local flavor to be added through additional menu items, language, pop culture and values.

For 35 years, Publicis Groupe’s Leo Burnett led McDonald’s global marketing initiatives, partnering with a multitude of in-country agencies to create the local touches. The mention of this long standing agency relationship is enough to fill anyone who works in any global brand with immediate visions of complex and political relationships, confusion, meetings upon meetings, and endless discussions on budget. And of course the deep realisation that agency team’s obsession with fancy travel, awards and perverse incentives have all come at the expense of a lot of potential strategic thinking and creative output.
However, by the 2000s and 2010s, McDonald’s growth and revenue began to flatten, and the company needed to cut costs and identify efficiencies. A revolution was brewing. Out with their lead creative agency and and a model of multiple disparate and competing agencies!
McDonald’s wanted an agency that would understand the challenges it was facing and fully cater to its and its customers’ needs. None of the big agencies could do that.
The goals of this new model was to build a team that would cut costs, maintain a clear understanding of vision and brand, and cater to customers’ needs. These goals also happen to be the principles that created McDonald’s first revolution nearly 80 years ago that built the fast food industry.
McDonald’s partnered with Omnicom to create We Are Unlimited. Based in Chicago, Illinois, We are Unlimited works alongside McDonald’s HQ. Its team is made up of 200 staffers of embedded team members from Omnicom, McDonald’s marketing team, The Marketing Store, Facebook, Google, Twitter, Adobe, New York Times T Brand Studio and international specialized agencies.
We Are Unlimited was designed to be flexible with experts all in one place, easily adaptable to a fast-moving market place and able to put out messages at a moments notice, ensuring relevance. We Are Limited began pumping out work in 2017.
McDonalds is not the first global brand to make a break from the tired, old agency structure — as other brands have noticed of the coming change of the guard, and have moved to create their own bespoke agencies like Procter & Gamble’s AT&T focused Hearts & Science, Ford’s Global Team Blue, and Johnson & Johnson’s J3.
Needless to say, the revolution is here, and global brands are lovin’ it.
Originally published at elephant.md
