McDonald’s menu items become part of the Calgary Stampede scenery in an out-of-home campaign that nods to the brand’s presence in the Canadian West.
“Cowboy Closeups” by creative agency Cossette features photographs by Kate Ince of cowboy hats, belt buckles and fringed-leather shirts that double as Big Macs, french fries and vanilla cones.
Camila Merlano, McDonald’s Canada’s marketing lead for the Western region, says the creative is designed both to elicit double takes and celebrate the QSR’s food suppliers.
“We’re proud to once again support the Calgary Stampede and honour the people behind the food we serve every day,” Merlano said in a news release. “We’re championing our partnership with the Calgary Stampede and celebrating our shared values of community, quality and Canadian pride, all in a playful, memorable way.”
The campaign’s OOH and social activations launched on July 4 and will run in Calgary through the end of the stampede on July 13. OMD is handling the media buy and Weber Shandwick is working on PR.
McDonald’s and Cossette’s “Eat the Code” campaign from June 2024 also used a hiding-in-plain-sight visual approach, appealing to Quebec tech workers with billboards that used recoloured lines of code to symbolize a Big Mac’s layers.
“Cowboy Closeups” takes a similar approach, using region-specific creative to speak directly to a targeted Western audience.
“Our goal was to blend these two visual worlds in a way that felt seamless and unexpected,” Cossette senior art director Shona Massey said in the news release. “We ended up with something that feels more like part of Stampede culture and less like traditional advertising, which was kind of the whole idea.”
McDonald’s Canada’s presence at the Calgary Stampede also includes a custom-wrapped McFlurry trailer featuring games, photo opportunities and Western-themed merchandise developed in collaboration with experiential marketing agency House of XM.
