Going BIG screen with McDonald's 'Little Piccadilly'

McDonald’s has had a sign at Piccadilly Circus since 1987. In March 2014 Leo Burnett relaunched it as Little Piccadilly: an illustrated world where anyone could build a character on their phone and send it up onto the screen. Characters greeted the square in the sender’s own language, mixed with the other residents and changed with the weather, the time of day and the season. It ran 24/7, all year round.

It was my first project after joining Leo Burnett and it was already moving when I arrived. My job was to get it from concept to a working screen.

A project like this has a lot of owners. The mobile site, the character builder, the content feed and the screen were split across several specialist production partners, each with its own scope and contract. Then there were the screen owners, who had their own hardware, publishing rules and approval process.

My focus was on:

• Reviewing every partner’s scope early and closing the gaps between them, so the whole journey from phone to screen had a clear owner
• Getting partners talking to each other directly and agreeing the hand-offs between their parts of the build
• Working with the screen operator to understand their technical and publishing requirements and making sure the build met them
• Translating between creative, client and technical teams so decisions didn’t stall

• Technical oversight across the mobile site, character builder and live screen feed
• Partner coordination and integration planning
• Liaison with the screen operator on specs and publishing
• Quality control and launch support

Little Piccadilly launched in March 2014 and was covered by Campaign, The Drum, Marketing Week and Fast Company. Visitors could choose from over 300 million combinations of artwork and animation, all illustrated by Stanley Chow.

It was a baptism of fire and the lesson stuck. On a project with this many partners, the hardest technical problem is usually getting everyone to build towards the same thing.