Adjusting to One Another's Light

Last week McDonald’s stopped me mid-scroll.

Not with a burger. Not with fries. There was no deal, no bright red background. Just a photograph of a street through a rain-soaked window. The kind of image I love to take. Some of you may remember my laundry-through-the-shower-screen photo — the phone picture that changed so much for me. In the ad, the Paris buildings softened into smudges of amber and grey. In the corner, quietly: McDelivery.

That was the whole ad. One human speaking to another, instead of the usual human selling a product. The feeling of the day you’d order in. They didn’t show the food. They showed the rain.

I shared the McDonalds ad on my stories - I always share things that stop me. Unaffiliated, not sponsored. My enquiring brain sharing it with yours.

Later that day, as the ad filtered down through my internal processing systems, a thought surfaced. Like the bubbling on a fermenting brew. The biggest, loudest, flashiest brand on the planet, built on being the brightest light on every high street in the world, had learned to lower its voice.

And then the memory: a year ago, I hadn’t.