McDonalds and haute cuisine together, to an Italian audience, might sound as the devil and holy water. We created a DM containing an angel and devil-formed salt and pepper. The McDonalds logo was printed on the devil, whilst a question mark was printed on the angel.The invitation contained the message: If you think you’ve seen it all, come and change your mind. Haute cuisine is coming at McDonalds. We then sent the DM to the top journalists in Milan, not only those from food magazines.

For the launch of the new McItaly sandwiches, made with recipes from the famous Italian chef Gualtiero Marchesi, McDonalds decided to hold a press conference in one of its restaurants in Milan to reveal this secret partnership together with a tasting of the new sandwiches, all in a haute-cuisine dinner set up.McDonalds was looking for an unconventional invitation for the press that had to be teasing enough without revealing the partnership. Their objective was to have the most media coverage possible for the launch, so they needed to involve press that wasn’t only from the food market.

More than 100 members of the press showed up and squashed in to assist the revealing of this astonishing partnership, and in the following days, the news was covered over 470 times in different kinds of press, from online to offline, from food to lifestyle.

The creative execution had the objective of strengthening the contrast of having haute cuisine in a fast-food restaurant, without revealing the real big news: the recipes made by the famous chef Gualtiero Marchesi.

The icons of angel and devil represented this contrast in the physical space adding a teaser ingredient that had the aim of intriguing the press, motivating them to discover more about this operation.Since the mailing had the objective to obtain the maximum redemption of press at the conference, it was not only sent to the food press, but also to lifestyle and daily news press.This operation was very successful for the brand since it gave important media coverage to the operation.