McDonald’s: Local Leaders, Global Impact

Challenge

McDonald’s is the world’s leading global foodservice retailer with over 43,000 locations in over 100 countries. Operating in Europe for more than 50 years, the business has over 8,500 restaurants across 30 countries in the region. McDonald’s works in partnership with more than 1,400 franchisees who operate over 90% of their restaurants on the continent. Europe is also home to three of McDonald’s largest markets globally, France, UK and Germany.

McDonald’s partnered with Forbes to drive awareness of this robust franchise ecosystem amongst an audience of C-Suite and Decision Makers, Business Leaders and Policy Makers, and drive consideration for future franchises opportunities across Europe.

With its award-winning editorial platforms (Small Business, Self-Made Women, Next Billion Dollar Start-Up) and engaging leaders across Retail, Food and Drink, Small Business Strategy categories, Forbes’s strength lies in the ability to reach strong, global, highly engaged qualified audience on its digital and social platforms. Forbes gives people the knowledge, resources, inspiration and connections they need to achieve success, offering McDonald’s an unparalleled access to the right audience where they are.

For over 10 years, Forbes has been offering its partners branded storytelling solutions through Forbes BrandVoice, the Forbes Content & Design Studio, connecting businesses and promoting thought leadership with cross-platform content programs.

Brand:

Entered by:

McDonald’s and Forbes worked together to produce a piece of branded content showcasing European McDonald’s franchisees’ success stories and local business initiatives, in an interactive and engaging way, and delivered to Forbes influential audiences on Forbes.com and Forbes social platforms.

Leveraging the power of first-person storytelling and dynamic and interactive graphics, this high-impact premium feature positioned McDonald’s franchisees as pioneers of “glocalization” in Europe to drive positive change in their communities.

Content Solution

Local Leaders, Global Impact: How McDonald’s Franchisees are shaping European cities and communities.

In collaboration with McDonald’s, Forbes have produced a visually stunning, animated content experience that highlights McDonald’s model’s ability to empower change on a broad, local and individual scale, ultimately reinforcing the positioning of the McDonald’s brand among a B2B audience.

Designed and produced by Forbes Content Studio, this BrandVoice Premium Post showcased inspiring stories of entrepreneurs balancing business success with social responsibility, supporting employees, engaging in community initiatives, and tailoring experiences to local cultures.

When visiting the Premium Post on Forbes.com, readers were presented with a profile-led content piece, introducing the achievement of Domenico Di Carluccio, a Rome-based franchisee who owns six restaurants in the Italian city, who will be exclusively spotlighted later in the Post.

The introduction also included quotes from Dario Baroni, President, International Development Licensed Markets at MacDonald’s, reminding the brand’s commitment to affordable, quality food by working with local farmers, and respecting culinary traditions and cultures.

The Post then offered a deep dive into Domenico Di Carluccio’s leadership style (which he calls “envision, enable, energize”) and its positive impact on his staff – providing after-school care for employees or offering scholarship and educational support for their families through the McDonald’s Archways to Opportunity program.

Scrolling down the content piece, readers were presented with the profile of family business entrepreneur Ana Margarida Teixera, a franchisee who took over her mother’s McDonald’s ownership to now own seven restaurants in Portugal. She explained the importance of legacy and connection with the community when running local businesses, particularly for a global brand.

The Premium Post showcased another ten snapshot stories of local leaders from all around Europe in a carousel-style, with brief narratives and quotes.

In addition to supplemental information about McDonald’s role in fostering their success—readers could learn about the franchisees’ collective importance to shaping a brighter future for Europe, and the strength of a global brand.

Each of their stories was also connected by an interactive map, offering readers the possibility to click on each country/city to access further information on their franchise network, anecdotes, key figures and unique initiatives.

The Post concluded with an infographic that recapped the presence of McDonald’s in Europe and invited readers to learn more about McDonald’s franchise opportunities with a call-to-action link.

Media/Content Amplification Solution

To distribute the co-created piece of content to the above-mentioned audience in McDonald’s desired market (Europe including the UK), Forbes leveraged its digital platform Forbes.com, which gathered 109 million unique users each month globally in 2025.

With 28% of them being C-Suite professionals, 45% Business Decision Makers, 18% Small Business Owners, Forbes.com was the platform of choice to deliver McDonald’s brand messaging. To specifically engage with McDonald’s core audiences, Forbes leveraged their First Party Data capabilities ForbesOne to provide access to their unique audience: targeting through Forbes Community Segments, Interests and Demographics, using zero and first-party data wherever people interact with the Forbes Brand.

For this campaign, the ForbesOne targeting segments implemented to meet McDonald’s requirements were ‘C-Suite, Business Decision Makers, Business Influencers, Small Businesses and Law and Policy’.

Furthermore, with a Forbes BrandVoice program, McDonald’s could publish the branded content piece via Forbes’ CMS, with the same always-on access as Forbes Editorial teams.

To reach the guaranteed 57,000 page views across a promotional window of two months, the campaign was also promoted through:

Native placements on Forbes Business channel with editorial stream placement at launch (the channel on Forbes.com where McDonald’s audience was most likely to interact with the content).
Featuring on Forbes.com homepage promotional carousel.
A dedicated McDonald’s BrandVoice Homepage on Forbes.com, gathering contributors and company details.
In-read, article stream native distribution powered by ForbesOne.

All while offering organic content discovery to readers thanks for Forbes’ strong SEO benefits.

Lastly, Forbes leveraged their unprecedented social reach (social footprint of over 90 million) and offered McDonald’s Local Leaders, Global Impact campaign exposure to an audience of C-Suite, Business Decision Makers and Small Businesses with guaranteed paid impressions across LinkedIn and Meta in the above markets. Key takeouts of the BrandVoice Premium Post were highlighted in high-impact social carousel units, driving users back to the Premium Post and to McDonald’s Franchises website.

Total Page views, surpassing the campaign goal of 57,000.

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Time spent engaging with website content, surpassing the benchmark by three seconds.

Impressions on social media (Facebook, Meta, LinkedIn).

Results

The campaign exceeded expectations across all key performance indicators, delivering exceptional results and outperforming proposed benchmarks.

Content Delivery: The branded premium post surpassed the guaranteed 57,000 page views, delivering over 63,000 page views. The content achieved an average time spent of 50.3s, surpassing benchmark by 3 seconds.
Social reach: Impressions on social media reached above 675,000. Readers spent an average time of 75s interacting with the content on LinkedIn and Meta. Facebook performed exceptionally, being at 353% above the Forbes CTR benchmark, with owner-level roles giving the strongest CTR at 1.10%.
Audience Targeting: The campaign effectively reached C-Suite, Business Decision Makers and Owners on Forbes.com. 55% of readers were Business Decision Makers, 51% work at companies with $100MM+ revenue, and 7.43x more likely to be Small Business Owners, 2.09x more likely to be in Board and Ownership segment.
Audience Interests: Targeted readers were 12x more likely to consume content about Small Business Solutions, 17x more likely to consume content about Franchise Marketing, 28x more likely to consume content about Entrepreneurship, 7.38x more likely to consume content about McDonald’s compared to the average internet user.
Geographic Targeting: The campaign effectively hit its geotargeting goals, garnering over 89% of page views from the brief’s target countries (Europe). Top 10 countries included UK, Germany, Netherlands, Poland, Italy, France.

Conclusion: The campaign’s outstanding results showed how McDonald’s high-impact article resonated with readers actively seeking stories of entrepreneurship, community impact and local leadership, reinforcing McDonald’s position as a a leading franchise brand for business professionals.