Unbeatable: the super books!
Campaign Development, Art Direction
MCDONALD’S GERMANY
LEO’S THJNK TANK (THJNK X LEO BURNETT)
Madeleine Schleemilch, Radwan Atwi
“Unbeatable: the super books!” turned McDonald’s Happy Meal books into a campaign platform built around play, storytelling, and discovery. Instead of treating the books as simple add-ons, the campaign gave them their own visual world across packaging, digital, in-store, and outdoor communication.
Challenge
The challenge was to create a reading campaign for children that felt playful and culturally relevant while still working within the highly commercial environment of a global fast-food brand.
Approach
The visual world was deliberately tactile and handcrafted. Together with photographer Marc, every character was physically cut, layered, and assembled by hand using paper elements, textures, and imperfections that matched the playful Happy Meal brand world at the time.
The packaging itself became part of the experience. Perforated elements revealed hidden content, a number-to-letter cipher allowed children to decode superhero names, and interactive mechanics turned the Happy Meal itself into part of the adventure, giving children the feeling of unlocking their own superpowers through the books and packaging.
On the digital side, the campaign included one of the first Facebook Canvas Ad deployments in Germany, using the format’s full-screen and motion-based capabilities to expand the campaign world into mobile.
My Role
Concept development, art direction, motion design, shooting supervision, and pre- and post-production across all campaign assets.
Impact
The Facebook Canvas Ad achieved an average dwell time of 32 seconds, above the average benchmark for the format at the time. The campaign rolled out across millions of Happy Meals and more than 200 campaign assets while maintaining a handcrafted and playful visual identity throughout every touchpoint.