Jared Hughes Portfolio

Attention, families! Whether you’re around the corner or across the globe, McDonald’s needs you for the biggest mission yet. Evil forces have invaded the Arches and gotten a hold of the restaurant’s most precious assets: THE HAPPY MEAL SMILES.To help recover ‘em all, minions and the Anti Villain League opted in to assist. ALL THAT’S MISSING NOW IS YOU. Get ready to unite with your yellow friends – big, tall, MEGA, and small – and get the smiles back to where they belong. Under the Arches. On the boxes. With the customers. Think you got what it takes? Let’s go save the smiles.

Once we got the Despicable Me 4 Happy Meal brief, we knew we had to go bigger, better, and bolder. Save the Smiles gave kids a participatory role in an undercover mission with their favorite movie characters and their go-to meal. Fun and mischief overload.

After a worldwide recruitment to save the smiles, families flooded McDonald’s for the Happy Meal, minion toys, and their very own mission card which gave them access to “save the smiles” via a fun digital game.

We made the narrative the main event at every touchpoint. Kids knew it was time to get down to business as soon as the box was handed to ‘em. And of course inside was their very own Minion for the mission.

But getting the Happy Meal isn’t where the fun ended. It was just the start of the mission. In every Happy Meal, we included a mission card that gave them access to unlock a next-level game where they could actually save the smiles.

The game featured all of the minions, an intro video of the smiles being stolen, and the ultimate gameplay where you could catch ‘em in action. And because this mission was no easy task, it featured three levels of difficulty to amp of the handheld fun.

Here’s a Happy Meal fan lovin it via TikTok.