McDonald’s uses a vintage doll for its Christmas ad

The fast food giant is placing its bets on a vintage wooden doll this Christmas.

McDonald’s headline Christmas TV ad, created by Leo Burnett, features a vintage doll called Juliette who comes to life after being left on a shelf and missing out on becoming a kid’s festive toy.

The red-haired doll glances at a McDonald’s restaurant opposite her toy shop window. On Christmas Eve, just as the toy shop is closing, Juliette escapes and meets fellow toy ‘Meteor Mike’ at the McDonald’s before leaving together in an emotional ending.

As well as the TV ad, Juliette will feature in McDonald’s social activity and in a separate 20-second ad highlighting this year’s Christmas menu. It will also be pictured on McDonald’s festive coffee cup collection, and other in-store activity will allow customers to potentially win £10 Amazon gift cards through McDonald’s first ever augmented reality-enabled tray mat.

Mcdonalds doll“The Juliette tray mat is our first step into augmented reality and we’re excited to see our customers using it,” says Emily Somers, vice president of food and marketing at McDonald’s UK.

The emotional ad follows a puppet-based campaign from Sainsbury’s, with McDonald’s using similar CGI effects and puppeteering. The ad will run over an eight-week period through a range of channels including TV, radio, out of home, digital and in-store advertising.

McDonald’s, partly boosted by positive UK trading, saw like-for-like revenue increase by 3.5% in the three months to September.

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