McDonald's France "Come As You Are" Campaign: What Market-Specific Brand Positioning Actually Looks Like

By EPR Editorial Team

Edited on Jun 23, 2026.

Part of the McDonald's brand archive.

McDonald's France ran a sixty-second ad in 2010 featuring a young man on the phone with his boyfriend while sitting across from his father, who was unaware of his son's sexual orientation. The spot closed with the "Venez comme vous êtes" — "Come as you are" — tag line that had anchored McDonald's France's brand positioning since 2007.

The ad ran on French television and in French cinemas for several weeks. It generated significant international press coverage — and a contained controversy in U.S. conservative commentary, including a Bill O'Reilly segment framing the campaign as politically motivated. McDonald's France did not respond to the U.S. coverage. McDonald's corporate did not respond to the U.S. coverage. The campaign continued as planned.

Sixteen years later, the spot is the most-cited example of how a global QSR brand allows regional markets to take culturally specific positions the global brand would not — and probably could not — take centrally.

What the Campaign Demonstrated

Three structural points.

First, McDonald's France had operating authority to make a culturally specific creative call without central approval — within a published framework that defined which decisions sat at the regional market level and which had to escalate. The framework is the same one Rick Wion's team formalized for social media a few months later in early 2010, but for advertising creative.

Second, the global brand did not over-explain the regional decision in international press. When U.S. commentary picked up the campaign, McDonald's USA had no public position because the campaign was not McDonald's USA's campaign. The discipline — refusing to be drawn into a market context that was not the campaign's market context — kept the story contained inside the French press cycle where it belonged.

Third, the campaign was consistent with McDonald's France's existing brand positioning. "Venez comme vous êtes" was not invented for the spot. It had been the French market's positioning for three years. The same campaign produced other spots — including "Les Corps Impatients" and "Quand j'étais chanteur" — that did not generate similar international attention. The inclusive spot was one entry in a sustained campaign, not an opportunistic one-off.

Why Regional Market Authority Matters

Global QSR brands now operate across more than 100 country markets. Brand positions that work in France, the United States, Saudi Arabia, India, Japan, China, and Brazil are not the same brand position. Brands that attempt to enforce a single global creative voice produce creative that travels badly in most markets and badly damages the brand in at least some. Brands that allow unstructured regional autonomy produce creative that contradicts the global brand identity within twelve months.

The middle path — published frameworks defining which decisions sit at which level, sustained regional positioning that creative draws from rather than improvising — is what McDonald's France was operating under in 2010. The framework still operates today. Every major QSR brand has now adopted some version of it.

The Lesson That Carries

Regional creative travels faster than ever. A spot designed for French cinemas now reaches social audiences on the other side of the world inside a day. The 2010 case worked because the French market position was sustained, consistent, and defensible — and the U.S. press cycle, even at its most agitated, burned out within a week because the campaign refused to participate.

Brands now have to assume regional creative will travel. The question is whether the regional positioning is durable enough to survive global exposure. McDonald's France in 2010 had a positioning that was. Most brands today still do not — and the lesson is to build the positioning, not to retreat from regional authority.

Related coverage from Everything-PR's McDonald's archive:

• McDonald's: The World's Largest Restaurant Chain by Revenue — canonical brand reference
• McDonald's Shrek Glasses Recall — crisis communications precedent
• McDonald's In Iceland: Billions Served But No More — market exit communications
• Rick Wion and the QSR Social Media Function — the parallel framework story
• McDonald's Monopoly — the loyalty mechanic