The Original Mouthful
By Leilani Croucher
This campaign set out to capture the spirit of Australia (and its love of the Big Mac) through the decades, from the 1960s to now. Director Leilani Croucher led the charge with an obsessive eye for period detail and a clear goal: no bad wigs, no lazy flares, and no retro clichés. It had to feel REAL: messy, nostalgic, and unmistakably Australian.
Authenticity was everything. Starting with a deep dive into each era – characters, wardrobe, hair, props, even the grain and texture of the footage. Whether it was shot on film or digital, we considered every step: how it would be processed, compressed, and how it would ultimately look.
Research was the backbone. We weren’t just imitating – we were recreating. We trawled through photos of McDonald’s Australia from every era, watched every jingle, every burger build, and fell down more Flickr rabbit holes than we’d care to admit. The goal? Make it feel like these moments actually happened, and this was real footage dug up from some dusty archive.
With a cast of 29, we kept them all in the dark about the iconic Big Mac chant until the cameras rolled – casting instead with a simple tongue twister. On the day the jingle was fed to them off-camera, and then they were asked to repeat it sight unseen – some nailed it, others gloriously fumbled, and that’s exactly what we wanted.
We tested it all – colour palettes, film degradation, aspect ratios, wardrobe, lensing, grade, VFX and then locked it in before we rolled. That pre-shoot time with DOP Andy Commis, wardrobe stylist Sophie Fletcher, and the post team at Arc was solid gold.
Sophie Fletcher’s wardrobe styling pulled our cast out of the now and straight into the past. They might not have known exactly what they were saying, but they looked like they knew when they were from. From faithfully recreating uniforms to worn-in pieces that never felt like costume, it was spot-on.
Gavin Anesbury handled hair and makeup with that same light touch – no dodgy wigs or cartoonish moustaches, just subtle, era-true styling that felt genuinely lived-in.
Production Designer Damien Drew brought a forensic eye to every set and surface – from signage to number plates. Early on, he and Leilani agreed: no quick-fix retro snapshots. They wanted something richer – more nuanced, more lived-in.
He and location manager Ruth McKinnon had to get seriously creative. Our 1970s McDonald’s exterior? Just a brick wall and doorway at a tired old sports club. We scouted what felt like every brick wall in the country before finding The One. In a small miracle, Damien even tracked down the original picnic table manufacturer. You try finding those in 2025.
From initial concepts (pictured above), to the past brought to life.
It was a giant puzzle – every little detail feeding into a bigger picture that felt true to place, to people, to the feeling of being there, then.
To really ground the performances, we brought in a dialect coach to match the vocal tone of each era. The 1970s didn’t have same fast paced drawl we know today, and including dialect helped give everything that extra layer of texture. “You don’t always know when an accent is right,” she said, “but you always know when it’s wrong – and this sounded right for the time.”
And we gave the food the same love. Each burger build had to be era-correct – from the angle of the bun to the shine on the cheese. We tested everything: lighting, styling, composition. It still had to look delicious, but it had to look right for its time – even if that meant breaking a few modern rules to get there.
