There’s not a golden arch in sight, but you’ll know this is a McDonald’s billboard when you smell it.
McDonald’s installed mini mobile billboards in the Dutch cities of Utrecht and Leiden, each about 650 feet from a restaurant location. The plain red and yellow billboards don’t use a single word or image to advertise McDonald’s offerings—and they don’t need to.
Instead, the billboards pump out the aroma of warm french fries to passersby, who seem to instinctively know the scent of a McDonald’s french fry compared to any other form of fried potato. “Smell has been proven to be more effective at sparking clear and emotional memories than images,” says McDonald’s Netherlands CMO Stijn Mentrop-Huliselan.
This led the brand agency TBWA\Neboko to partner with Raúl&Rigel, a production company that specializes in unusual billboards, to make a scented billboard for the new McDonald’s campaign. Each billboard has a side compartment for holding fries and a ventilation system built to intensify and diffuse the scent.
“We are always looking for ways to give iconic brand assets their own place in culture,” Darre van Dijk, CCO of TBWA\Neboko says. “The smell of McDonald’s french fries is one of those iconic features.”
A new kind of branding
Scent marketing is known to increase sales and product quality perception. McDonald’s even marked the 50th anniversary of its Quarter Pounder with a limited-edition candle set.
The scented billboards are just the latest example of McDonald’s unusually artistic approach to advertising. A campaign last year turned menu items into striped abstract art in Toronto, and a 2021 campaign in France pixelated close-up images of burgers and McDonald’s smiling red french fries packaging.
The abstraction is a testament to McDonald’s strong brand equity. There’s no need to see a cheeseburger or fries for a brand as universal as McDonald’s. Sometimes, smelling is enough.
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