Fast food brands add new menu items from time to time. McDonald’s and Leo UK how to make them grab attention. The partners have recruited fans again to choose the second edition of this year’s World Menu Heist, stealing menu items for the UK from McDonald’s in other countries throughout the world. And there’s another high-action, heist short film to create excitement.

The second menu continues this year’s fan-fuelled approach, with the wider World Menu Heist campaign shaped around the international McDonald’s products fans most want to get their hands on. It builds on the original platform’s idea of turning fans into accomplices in a global heist. Fan favourites from the first haul are also staying on the menu, including Paprika McShaker Fries.

The new film picks up the original heist story, with a second van burst into the crew’s warehouse, dragging another golden vault behind it. The crew gets to work cracking it open, using everything from a McDonald’s cup to a blowtorch and Paprika McShaker Fries seasoning to dust for prints and decipher the password. The vault finally opens to reveal boxes of China’s Chicken McWings, the hero of the second haul. The film is supported by a 10-second edit.

On Saturday October 17, the campaign entered real life, with fans and creators in Birmingham attending an exclusive tasting event where they unlocked a golden vault in order to try the Chicken McWings ahead of the second menu launch.

Short-form social films, running across TikTok and X, invite fans back into the heist world for the crew’s second haul. Fans get a sneak peek inside the second vault, see ‘repeat offender’ crew members getting their hands on Chicken McWings, and watch the new menu items arrive in the crew’s signature golden boxes.

A partnership with Duolingo plays on the global nature of the heist, encouraging fans to “speak like an international mastermind”, while the campaign’s partnership with LADBible continues.

OOH continues the golden-vault visual identity with the line, “You wanted more… so we heisted more”, putting the four new products front and centre.

And the fans’ role in the operation isn’t over. Social activity will invite them to share which international McDonald’s favourites they want to see brought to the UK next, continuing to share the pen with fans on where the heist could go next.

Jason Keet and James Hodson, creative directors at Leo UK, stated, “The best thing about World Menu Heist is that the fans are effectively our co-conspirators. They give us the targets; we work out how to steal them. This second haul is our answer to fans asking for more. Another heist felt like the only reasonable response.”

Leo UK led creative, digital and social. Media planning and buying was handled by OMD. PR, events and influencer activity were handled by Red Consultancy. Social partnerships were handled by LADbible. CRM was handled by TMW, digital activation by TMS, and POP and in-restaurant communications by Linney.

Here’s the first episode: