Wieden+Kennedy (W+K) has been added to McDonald’s Australia‘s creative agency roster.
Maccas put part of its creative account up for pitch in October 2024. The Big Mac giant said that it was seeking to find an “additional creative agency partner from our existing global agency roster”.
DDB Sydney still holds most of the creative account, which they have held for a whopping 55 years.
W+K forms part of Maccas’ creative roster in the US, alongside Droga5. In Europe and Asia, TBWA handles creative and Leos is the UK account. DDB also controls its New Zealand account.
W+K’s remit in Australia will start with Chicken and McCafe, according to reports. It will have a “small core team” similar to Telstra’s +61, according to Little Black Book. The team will include talent from across the W+K network as well as new Australian hires. According to LBB, it has already hired a handful of people in Sydney and will continue to grow.
“The appointment sees the highly successful creative company join our award-winning agency village, which aims to continue to deliver compelling and successful campaigns to drive our brand and business forward,” a McDonald’s spokesperson said.
“We were incredibly impressed by W&K’s understanding of our fans and creative approach and we are excited to work with them, alongside our existing agency partners – DDB, OMD, Akcelo and Digitas – in 2025. We would like to acknowledge and thank the other agencies who participated in the process,” they added.
W+K told Little Black Book that it will “find the unique fan truths that make McDonald’s special in that market.”
“The team in Australia have set a very specific goal to make work that brings these fan insights to life and find their ways into culture,” the agency said.
“We couldn’t be more excited to work more closely with this team to do that.”
W+K also said that its “priority first and foremost is McDonald’s” but wouldn’t confirm if it would be pursuing other pitches.
“We have deep love for this brand and success to us is getting this started off right in Australia with work that makes McDonald’s proud. More generally, our approach to expansion will always be built around growing relationships with current clients first, vs growing to get bigger for ourselves,” W+K added.
According to Nielsen’s Advertising Media Spend Report, McDonald’s is the second largest advertising spender in Australia.
Additional reporting by Aimee Edwards.
