How Leo Burnett Brought McDonald’s First Facebook Live Stunt to Life

A nimble team brought a little improv and old-school broadcast techniques to a new digital platform.

McDonald’s wanted to celebrate National Hamburger Day in a decidedly modern way. So at the behest of Leo Burnett Chicago, it turned to Facebook Live video, arguably one of the hottest rollouts by the social media behemoth. To bring the live effort to life, the agency took a slightly unconventional approach, using traditional broadcast techniques to augment a live, unscripted digital stunt.

The almost hour-long video, which went live on May 25, received no paid media support but still reached 884,300 people and produced 43,200 engagements (a mix of likes, comments and shares), the brand told Adweek after the event.

The video, called “The Starving Artist,” features an ugly-sweater-wearing artist named Bevin, who appears to paint “museum-worthy” canvases of a Big Mac and a Quarter Pounder With Cheese while riffing in a calm voice that he needs a “chin bib, because my mouth starts to water as I work.” (Think Bob Ross of “The Joy of Painting” fame as imagined by Second City.)

While Facebook Live has become of a must-do for some brands, it’s been fraught with technical risk, not to mention the uncertainty of whether anyone would show up to watch an almost hour-long improvised comedy routine.

So why did McDonald’s chose a potentially risky sketch routine to debut its first Facebook Live video?

“Social and digital should be a little more stunt-y than just a pretty picture,” said Kevin McGlone, who along with fellow associate creative directors Donna Foster and Kristen Schwanz at Leo Burnett helped come up with the idea. “So we need to talk to the Internet a bit more than talking to ourselves.”

Said Foster: “It’s about providing the entertainment that people are looking for when they engage in social media.”

The creatives, who do a lot of social media work for the client along with Art Director Cristina Hernandez and Copywriter Jack Dess, had been eyeing National Hamburger Day as a target for activation and hit upon Facebook Live as a platform for their next move. The team had already pulled off a well-received April Fool’s prank for McDonald’s called “MmmBox,” a parody of all those boxed subscription services.

“We wanted to do something more than a post,” said Schwanz. “We wanted to ‘own’ National Hamburger Day by doing something that stood out from everyone else.”

The team pitched the idea, which also included a charity component on behalf of the Ronald McDonald House, to the client in mid-April. McDonald’s, which is always eager to experiment with the latest platforms, had been on the hunt for just the right Facebook Live opportunity, the team said. And very quickly what started as a one-slide concept became a 30-slide presentation to the client team.

With the target day a little more than a month away, the team quickly had to get into the weeds around Facebook Live — not to mention how to paint burgers. They reached out to Facebook to discuss best practices, such as optimal video length and the best day to post. McGlone said the team had to move the day up from the Saturday, the actual National Hamburger Day, to Wednesday, to capture a better audience.

The creative team collaborated with Leo Burnett’s in-house production unit, Greenhouse. The live shoot took place in Greenhouse’s studio on the second floor of the Leo Burnett building. The team also worked with LBI, the agency’s digital arm, which had the software smarts to run Facebook Live.

Greenhouse helped hone the idea from a production standpoint. Until now, the team had envisioned the whole shoot being one long live production.

“Initially we were thinking we would even be shooting the [actual] painter live,” said Foster. Greenhouse helped devise a strategy in which pre-recorded footage of the real painter plying his craft would be edited with the unscripted live studio recording of Bevin, whose only must-say dialogue was some key messaging about McDonald’s burgers. A series of cues from the production booth would prompt Bevin and inform him when the live feed would cut to previously filmed content. In all, the team used 225 different cuts throughout the 45-minute shoot.

“I don’t know if anyone has actually done a Facebook Live event that took it to the level we had,” said McGlone. “Buzzfeed had a camera on a watermelon. … We had a fully edited live show.”

And like many successful Facebook Live events (PR Week called it one of the 6 most innovative brand uses of the platform), as Bevin continued to run through his ad lib and engage with commenters during the feed, there needed to be a clear payoff. The reveal came in the form of three paintings, which were put up for auction on eBay after the shoot.

Others within Leo Burnett also played a key role in bringing the production together. Amanda McKinney, agency’s director of sweepstakes, games and contests, helped clear some legal hurdles around effort’s the charity award, and even Leo Burnett’s new chief creative officer, Britt Nolan, had a hand in the outcome.

“We were here at 9 at night and he does a pass through the office and stops by and chats with us,” McGlone recalled. “He had some suggestions on making the painting experience more interesting and it definitely changed how we approached it.”

“I’ll never forget the collective scream that permeated the second floor when we ended our live feed,” Schwanz said. “It was a labor of love, and everyone worked so hard to make this a success.”