McDonald's Impressive WcDonald's Anime Campaign
Posted on April 7, 2024
McDonald's unveiled an impressive anime campaign in February called WcDonald's. The campaign featured original anime episodes, a fictional restaurant, new characters, manga-inspired packaging, the launch of a new sauce and more.
The WcDonald's logo uses a W instead of an M. You can see the anime signpost for the restaurant above.
McDonald's teamed up with Japanese manga artist/illustrator Acky Bright to design custom WcDonald's packaging. The packaging featured WcDonald's Crew characters, sketched by Acky. They also partnered with studio pierrot to produce the anime videos. Four shorts were created covering anime subgenres Action, Romance, Mecha and Fantasy.
This video shows the first short called "The Race to WcDonald's."
The shorts and anime characters can be found on wcdonalds.com. Some of the many characters created include Burg, Cinnamon, Hashirune, J, Kazuki, Wicke and Yaruzo.
This video shows the WcDonald's characters.
A sauce with Asian flavors was created called the Savory Chili WcDonald's Sauce. It is made with a combination of ginger, garlic and soy with a slight heat from chili flakes.
McDonald's used social media including Instagram and X to promote the anime content. A post on KnowYourMeme says "Online, the campaign stunned many who were surprised to see McDonald's fund a relatively big-budget anime for its ads after it emerged in February 2024.