McDonald's Ads History: From 1970s Jingles to the Grimace Shake

Ronald McDonald and the early history of McDonald’s ads

The history of McDonald’s ads on television starts with a single franchise operator in Washington, DC, and a new clown. In 1963 three local commercials introduced Ronald McDonald, the Hamburger-Happy Clown, played by Willard Scott. Viewers outside the capital did not see him for another two years, and the first costume did not last long.

Ronald reached a national audience in 1965 during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade broadcast. In 1966 the circus performer Michael Polakovs, known as Coco the Clown, redesigned the costume and makeup into something closer to the familiar version. The golden arches behind him have their own story, told in the McDonald’s logo history.

McDonald’s ads in the 1970s: You Deserve a Break Today

The 1970s gave McDonald’s ads their most famous song. You Deserve a Break Today ran from 1971 to 1975 in both the United States and Canada, and it shifted the pitch from fast service to a small reward for tired parents. Instead of selling burgers, the ads sold an evening off from cooking.

A footnote that surprises people: the jingle is often credited to Barry Manilow, but it is generally attributed to the songwriter Kenny Karen. Manilow sang it in one commercial version, which explains the mix-up. The line came back in the US from 1981 to 1983 and again from 1989 to 1991, and in Australia during the early 1980s.

Jingles of this kind, short, singable and tied to a feeling rather than a product, are traced in more detail in the guide to advertising jingles. The McDonald’s version mattered because it worked for children and adults at once. A child heard a song about a treat, and a parent heard permission to skip the dishes.

McDonaldland, 1971, and a costly lawsuit

The first McDonaldland commercial aired in January 1971. It introduced a fantasy kingdom with the Hamburglar, Mayor McCheese, a cheeseburger-headed official, and Officer Big Mac. Grimace arrived in November 1971 as the Evil Grimace, a villain with two pairs of arms for stealing shakes and soft drinks. By 1972 he had been softened into a friendly character with two arms.

McDonaldland met a legal problem. In 1973 television producers Sid and Marty Krofft sued, arguing that the kingdom copied their children’s show H.R. Pufnstuf. A jury awarded $50,000, and in 1977 a federal appeals court upheld the finding of copying and sent the damages back for a new assessment. Some characters had to change or disappear from McDonald’s ads.

By 1985 Mayor McCheese, Officer Big Mac, Captain Crook and the Professor were gone from the commercials. A direct-to-video series kept some of the cast going from 1998 to 2003, but by the early 2000s the fantasy setting had largely been dropped. Soft drink cups with the characters lingered until 2008, the last trace of a 1970s idea.

i’m lovin’ it, 2003: McDonald’s ads go global

In 2002 McDonald’s recorded its first financial loss, and the response was a single global brand idea that every market would share. The company unveiled i’m lovin’ it in Chicago on June 12, 2003. On September 2 it launched publicly in Munich as ich liebe es, the first McDonald’s worldwide campaign ever produced outside the United States.

The rollout covered more than 100 countries, with five new commercials shot in 12 languages in places such as the Czech Republic, Brazil, South Africa and Malaysia. The US launch followed on September 29. Justin Timberlake sang on English-language spots and released a full single version on November 20, 2003, reportedly earning $6 million.

One aside from those years shows another side of McDonald’s ads. In 2008 a billboard reading four bucks is dumb took a swipe at Starbucks prices, which made it one of the company’s rare openly comparative ads. Slogan tactics like this one are part of the wider story of famous slogans and how brands defend them.

The Grimace Shake, 2023

The most talked-about McDonald’s campaign of the 2020s was barely planned as a campaign at all, at least not in the form it took. From June 12, 2023, US restaurants sold a purple, berry-flavoured Grimace Shake for a limited time to mark the character’s birthday. Customers compared the taste to bubblegum or fruity breakfast cereal.

TikTok did the rest. Users filmed themselves wishing Grimace a happy birthday, then cut to staged scenes of themselves collapsed and covered in purple, as if the shake were a horror film villain. By mid-July, #Grimace and #Grimaceshake each had about 2.7 billion views. The company played along lightly, posting a Grimace video that pretended not to notice.

Sales followed the joke. The launch helped lift US sales at established restaurants by 10.3 percent, and global comparable sales for April to June 2023 rose 11.7 percent, above analyst estimates. It is now a standard case in the guide to viral marketing campaigns, mostly because the brand let the audience write the story without interfering.

McDonaldland returns, and an AI misstep in 2025

Grimace kept the momentum. On June 12, 2024, the character threw a ceremonial first pitch at a New York Mets game, and the team then went on a winning streak. On August 5, 2025, McDonald’s aired a commercial that brought back McDonaldland and most of its cast, including Ronald, for a limited meal.

The year ended badly in the Netherlands. In December 2025, the Dutch arm released a 45-second AI-generated Christmas ad that framed the holidays as stressful and chaotic. Critics objected to the generative AI and to the cynical tone, and the video was pulled within days. The AI in advertising guide follows that wider debate.