Thinking about burgers and emojis all day led us to the idea that only real characters deserve to become emojis entering into our everyday conversations. In other words: only icons deserve to become icons. To showcase this message in our campaign, we took photos of real food and made it look exactly like emojis. We used emojis that every viewer could recognise. They’re true iconic symbols that are easily decoded as McDonald’s icons – not least because these emojis were inspired by McDonald’s products in the first place.

In this series of three motifs, a still-life photographer brings some of the world’s best-loved food emojis to life – by taking photos of real food but making it look exactly like the emojis. The look is deceptively simple, featuring single-colour backgrounds and one emoji per shot. Everything from the lighting to the angle the emoji sits at, creates such a resemblance that the images almost become an optical illusion. Poking fun at our culture in a light-hearted manner, the resulting campaign brings humour to the often serious and commercial world of food photography. The three emojis used are all easily recognisable to McDonald’s fans: the burger, the cup with the straw and, of course, the fries in the typical red McDonald’s package. The tagline perfectly sums up what this campaign is about: Everyday Icons.

As the campaign was designed solely as an indoor poster campaign, its major impact was, of course, in McDonald’s restaurants in Germany. But it did more than add value to the brand for its customers – it also had an impact on how McDonald’s as a global brand views and shows food in its photography. The campaign poked fun at our culture in a light-hearted manner, bringing humour to the often serious and commercial world of food photography. A true change for a brand like McDonald’s.