“The best ideas are often the simplest.” This was one of them, inspired by the perfect opportunity. Every year, the king visits one of the Dutch cities to celebrate his birthday with the residents. The event is always broadcast live on national TV and watched by millions of people. In 2016, the main stage where the king would celebrate his birthday and where the live broadcast would take place, was located right in front of our local restaurant.

So, we hijacked the event, with a spontaneous twist. We did the unthinkable. For the first time ever, McDonald’s changed her logo. We flipped the iconic Golden Arches on the outside of our restaurant, creating a W for Willem as a tribute to our king. And since the king’s visit was broadcast live on national television, our stunt was picked up by major TV stations and ended up going went viral.

“If you are going to do something, do it all the way.” Right? Because that is what we did during our hijack of the biggest annual event of our country. Besides turning around the iconic Golden Arches of McDonald’s ? for the very first time in history ? On the outside of our restaurant, we took our stunt a little further. For just one day, we changed everything (and we mean everything) in our restaurant. Every item on the menu had a flipped M; from the packaging of the products to the façade of our restaurant building outside. This resulted in receiving incredible amounts of free media coverage and reaching millions of people, in just one day. Through one, local McDonald’s restaurant in The Netherlands.

One little twist to McDonald’s iconic logo, brought us some big results:

• 30 minutes (of the 2 hours broadcast) on national TV, with more than 3.5 million viewers (>20% of the entire country)

• An incredible amount of free publicity, amplified by the public

• Media time on different TV stations

• Earned (digital and social) media value at €1.1 million

• Last, but not least, a very grateful Facebook post from the king himself

Sometimes you just need to find the tiniest twist (quite literally) in your restaurant for it to become a canvas for creativity that creates a massive, nationwide impact. Sometimes it isn’t about big media budgets, sometimes it is just about the intelligence and innovativeness of an idea.

For our stunt during the most popular national celebration of the year, everyone in The Netherlands was our audience. To live up to our newly defined spontaneous and culturally relevant brand behavior, we wanted to do something, instead of tell something. We wanted to act, instead of spreading more ads. And Kings Day was the perfect event to do something like that, so that our act would be seen by as people as possible, as it it receives a lot of attention from the media and all those celebrating Kings Day. Moreover, we made sure that our stunt was consistently implemented; from packaging to outdoor.

Many people still see McDonald’s as a predictable, American fast-food chain. Our newly defined brand purpose? to spark spontaneous moments of joy? will play a defining role in changing that perception.

That’s why our objective was to demonstrate to as many people in The Netherlands that McDonald’s is a modern and spontaneous brand.

And what better way to show that we support spontaneity than on an (extremely well covered) national holiday that is usually fully thought out; where each move the birthday boy makes is pre-conceived. On Kings Day (you know, that day when the entire Dutch population takes to the streets and dresses in orange).

We wanted to publically demonstrate what we stand for, by inspiring our popular King (always up for a good joke), and the rest of The Netherlands that any moment, how predictable it might feel, can be turned into a spontaneous moment of joy.