McDonald’s, famous for serving hamburgers, fries and other fast-food staples, on Thursday is dishing out something else: history.
The chain, one of America’s best-known corporations, on Thursday will see the release on Amazon Prime Video of “Meal Ticket,” a documentary about its long-running All-American Game, a basketball game played each year with top boys’ and girls’ high school graduates. Over a nearly 50-year tenure, the boys’ game has included Magic Johnson, Kobe Bryant and Alonzo Mourning among others, while the girls’ game, almost 25 years old, has featured players including Sabrina Ionescu and JuJu Watkins.
While McDonald’s isn’t paying Amazon to run the film, the project is nonetheless something that promotes the company and the work it does with young people and charity. Intriguingly, the spark for the project came from a marketing agency that has developed a specialty in new advertising methodologies.
“Hollywood is upside down,” says Ross Martin, president of Known, an independent marketing agency that has worked with clients ranging from Nestle and Ubisoft to Warner Bros. Discovery. Many advertisers have built production studios to create content that might look a lot like a TV episode or short film. But not Known, says Martin. “What we’re doing is looking for brands that want to tell bigger stories that can earn attention and earn their place in culture.” McDonald’s, he adds, “didn’t pay for this movie. They didn’t buy time on Amazon Prime Video. That’s not why this movie is premiering in 240 countries on the main page of Prime Video. It’s appearing there because this is a story that’s earning its place in culture. And you can’t buy that.”
Known will in a few weeks launch a documentary series on CNN that is hosted by comic actor Fred Armisen. The as-yet-untitled series will each week offer fans a behind-the-scenes look into the contents of Universal Music Group’s vault. Bigger companies with years of operations under their corporate belts can promote themselves, says Martin, with “their history and intellectual property. Their brand promise has enough allure in the public realm to generate interest. And not every brand can do that.”
Many advertisers have tried to put their money into TV rather than traditional TV commercials. Pepsi in 2021 launched a Fox game show, “Cherries Wild.” Geico earlier this week unveiled “Miles That Matter,” a three-part documentary series that explores the travails of marquee college basketball players and is set to stream on Paramount+.
The key is that these projects have something other than the advertiser at their center. The projects Known is taking on utilize the marketer’s own archives to show viewers actual history that may not always have direct ties with the company’s core operations. “We have a historian who actually keeps the game uniforms, the basketballs,” explains Elizabeth Campbell, vice president of marketing for McDonald’s U.S. operations. ESPN, which has telecast the event, also has old tapes that could be tapped.
The restaurant chain had been spotlighting the event itself and got positive feedback on social media, says Campbell, before Known made inquiries. “Meal Ticket” was seen as “being respectful to the players” and “an authentic way to tell their stories about what it means for them to play this game” she says, as well as note the game’s overall impact over half a century.
Getting the documentary done, however, took several years. Directors Carlton Gerard Sabbs and Corey Colvin were able to dig deep at the 2022 and 2023 All-American Games. They “had that opportunity to see exactly what the kids go through from the moment that they check in, to get their room assignments, and they get their jerseys and all their practice gear for the week,” says Colvin. They found stories there of some of the young hopefuls and the way the game can give them a boost. But there was much more to be done, like tracking down some of the pros who once played at the McDonald’s event. Known had teamed up with Roc Nation, Jay-Z’s production company and enlisted Jalen Rose as a producer. They helped establish contact with players.
The directors still had to work to find crucial pieces of the story. Largely missing from the McDonald’s archives was footage of Bob Gagan, a founder of the event. “We found a few old photos in the McDonald’s archive. nothing beyond that,” says Billy Burke, a producer on the film. And then the directors tracked down a interview of Gagan telling the story of how the All-American Game launched — something that seemed elusive earlier in the process.
McDonald’s is famous in media circles for working to maintain tight control over its image. But the filmmakers say they didn’t find any of the tensions one might expect. “Coming into this, we didn’t know what to anticipate. We didn’t know if McDonald’s would want to sort of sanitize the story or hide any of the blemishes. And that was absolutely unequivocally not the case,” says Burke. “I can’t think of one element that was asked to be removed from this film in order to sort of protect an image of this game.”
Executives at Known believe that in an era of soaring interest in stories told via podcast and streaming video, there’s new room for other ambitious projects. “I believe it’s a watershed moment for brand inspired content,” says Martin.
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