Tuesday, September 9, 2025

McDonald’s AI-Powered Lunar New Year Ad

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Dive Brief:

  • McDonald’s has teamed with digital content creator Karen X Cheng to launch an interactive campaign around Lunar New Year, in line with a press release. 
  • Central to the campaign, created by IW Group, is a 30-second ad spot that’s one in all the primary to include neural radiance fields (NeRF) technology which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to create a 3D scene. 
  • McDonald’s seeks to stay on the intersection of innovation and culture with the tech-forward effort. The campaign also includes an augmented reality (AR) filter on Instagram and a metaverse experience hosted on Spatial that’s accessible through any connected device.

Dive Insight:

For Lunar New Year, McDonald’s has teamed with Karen X Cheng, a number one digital content creator whose work utilizes AI and AR and infrequently goes viral, for a campaign that spans several leading edge technologies. The fast food giant hopes the “tech-forward” effort will have a good time the vacation and help uplift the Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders community, in line with Elizabeth Campbell, McDonald’s senior director of cultural engagement strategy.

“We know our fans live on the intersection of innovation and culture and that is where McDonald’s needs to fulfill them,” Campbell said in a press release.

The 30-second ad spot is inspired by Cheng’s childhood memories of the vacation and includes a QR code call-to-action that results in other campaign elements. The ad’s use of NeRF technology comes as AI begins to emerge as a key technology for marketers. Ryan Reynolds’ Mint Mobile this week released an ad that was partially scripted using the conversational AI model ChatGPT, software that has quickly gained traction within the tech and marketing worlds.

Along with the ad, McDonald’s is returning to the metaverse to have a good time Lunar New Year, because it did last 12 months in what it billed as its first cross-media collaboration. This 12 months’s activation imagines the long run of the vacation, with 3D sculptures of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals. The brand will even host special events within the digital space, including a Year of the Rabbit celebration on Jan. 25 and a night with Cheng — in avatar form — on Feb. 2.

Rounding out the campaign is an AR filter on Instagram that uses a 3D illusion to transition from the Year of the Tiger to the Year of the Rabbit. Together, the AI-powered ad, metaverse experience and AR filter proceed McDonald’s utilization of digital experiences to have a good time Lunar New Year.

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