Dive Brief:

• Omnicom has named the newly formed dedicated team for the McDonald’s advertising account — We Are Unlimited — as revealed in a press release. In August it was announced that Omnicom had won the $1 billion account from Publicis’ Leo Burnett.
• The Chicago-based full-service agency for McDonald's in the U.S., which will be referred to as Unlimited, integrates strategy, creative and analytical capabilities for message delivery across online, mass market, in-restaurant and intercompany. It also features embedded teams from The Marketing Store, Facebook, Google, Twitter, Adobe, the T Brand Studio of The New York Times and others. 
• The We Are Unlimited team includes CEO Brian Nienhaus, a BBDO senior director, and executive creative director John Hansa who led creative at Leo Burnett Chicago on McDonald’s business.

Dive Insight:

Unlimited hopes to take McDonald's marketing in new directions, something the brand needs as it struggles to make a connection with a new generation of young consumers — typically a big audience for fast food chains — who are digitally savvy and whose dining habits are changing. These struggles have been reflected in a sales slump that spread across multiple quarters. 

Creating a dedicated agency such as Unlimited is not a typical strategy for big brands, although there have been a few well-publicized examples. Apple has a dedicated agency with TBWA while Dell's Enfatico agency within WPP was a short-lived attempt along these lines.

At the time Omnicom was chosen to handle McDonald’s advertising, its U.S. CMO Deborah Wahl said the fast food giant wanted to shift its advertising strategy toward targeted and personalized ads while making better use of its customer data. In October, Wahl told Ad Age, “You have to be ready to go if something happens competitively or there's a cultural moment, you have to be ready to unleash and put messaging out there that's relevant. The big thing today is to be more flexible in the approach."

McDonald’s also recently dramatically increased its internal social media staff in an effort to reach younger demographics more effectively.