Nowadays, McDonald's innovative branding and advertising makes headlines, with new campaigns that shake up design norms. But an urban explorer recently offered up an unusual opportunity to get immersed in a different era of Maccy D's – by uploading a video of an abandoned restaurant.
Retro design is a source of endless fascination, and this well-preserved restaurant interior, complete with packaging, drinks machines and even ceiling-mounted TV screens is an incredible example. People can't get enough of this on TikTok, and we can see why. Check the video out below – and if you're feeling architectural, see our roundup of the world's most famous buildings.
Set to atmospheric music, user Triangleofmass takes you on a nostalgic journey back to the '80s in this short clip. The restaurant actually closed in 2007, but it retained much of its 1980's design until the end with an intact set of features not often seen in modern restaurants.
If the TikTok edit isn't long enough for you, Triangleofmass has also uploaded a bumper-length video to YouTube, which includes the Oregan restaurant's kitchen and Drive Thru, among other features. You can see that video below or here.
Seeing the restaurant eerily preserved is like a time capsule back to a different era. With such an overwhelming response to the videos across TikTok and YouTube, it's clear that corporate branding across the ages makes a huge impact on the consumer – setting the scene for many of their memories and proving super-evocative.
All this has allowed McDonald's to become supremely confident of the consumer's ability to recognise its product without needing the full collection of familiar branding signposts, logos, text and images – something the fast food giant has experimented with in recent years. You may remember the groundbreaking campaign that relied on text and colour palette alone, or the most recent abstract poster series, which pixellated the products almost unrecognisably. Would you have guessed what these posters were advertising?
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