Gen Z no longer saw McDonald’s as a cool employer. Job applications were down in the age group that is the primary source of fast-food restaurant employees. It was time to make the McDonald’s uniform something Gen Z could wear with pride – to make it cool and relevant.

To do that, McDonald’s Finland teamed up with a local, up and coming fashion designer Jimi VAIN. He was chosen because of his cutting-edge style – for this to work people had to really want the fashion. In collaboration, the McDrip collection was born – upcycled fashion made out of used McDonald’s uniforms.

The collection included 13 unique looks and 27 individual pieces and was not for sale – it was only available to McDonald’s Finland employees. The whole budget for the collection was 40,550 € (including designer, production and fashion show).

How do you combine boosting employer image, creating something meaningful & cool and making your brand culturally relevant for Gen Z? We knew that to really reach this crowd, it was vital to break into popular culture. Fashion was an area, where young Finnish designers have recently gathered plaudits and that would tie in with a natural symbol of working at McDonald’s: the work uniform.

Local up and coming fashion designer Jimi VAIN was chosen as the collaborator – his style is cutting-edge and he is Gen Z himself. We didn’t want to ride on the fame of an established talent – the fashion collaboration needed to have more depth than that. The new collection designed by VAIN was upcycled from used McDonald’s workwear. It was a true, fruitful collaboration where the VAIN brand got to express their creativity and McDonald’s was actively present too. VAIN’s cutting-edge style proved we

The McDrip fashion line included 13 unique looks and 27 individual pieces. The designer Jimi VAIN integrated recognisable McDonald’s brand elements into the clothing, and the brand was present throughout since 90% of the fabric used was from used McDonald’s workwear – the remaining 10% from waste fabric in the textile industry.

The aesthetic extended to other launch executions: videos and posters combined the street fashion meets high fashion meets the McDonald’s brand aesthetic. To promote the fashion line, from the launch onwards all activation was on social and mostly through organic influencers (in addition to VAIN and McDonald’s Finland own channels).

The collection was raffled off to McDonald’s Finland employees – both new and old employees. On social media McDrip snowballed, and a look ended up worn by rapper star Lil Uzi Vert, who was captured in McDrip on Drake’s Instagram to his 136 million followers.

McDrip results were evaluated based on impact on employer image, job applications and brand metrics.

#1 target of increasing job applications to McDonald’s Finland was reached fast. Number of applications grew by 63% – a record-breaking number of total applications for McDonald’s Finland. There’s no longer a shortage of applicants for McDonald’s jobs in Finland.

Earned media reach was 228 million – to put it into proportion, that’s equal to 40 times the Finnish population.

Earned media value was 11MEUR – over 700 times the media spend.

Having Lil Uzi Vert wearing McDrip during a Drake gig and Drake posting a pic of it on Instagram to his 136 million followers was a welcome addition to the attention.

For their targeted 16-24-year-old demographic:

Employer image by 52%

Brand responsibility image by 69%

“It’s a brand I trust” perception by 65%

“Is a brand for someone like me” by 30%.

Finland is not known for many things, but design is one of those. Finns themselves are very conscious about this perception around the world. Yet Finnish design greats are largely from half a century ago. In the past decade, fashion has been a burgeoning field, where young Finnish designers are increasingly collecting plaudits and picking up cool positions around the world (Sasu Kauppi working on Kanye West’s fashion collection 4-5 years ago to name one). Therefore, fashion felt like a field where McDonald’s could really gain credible traction with the Gen Z crowd if working with a local, rising force with valid international potential.