As Unilever prepares to push most of its budget into ‘creators’, one of McDonald’s top marketers implies ditching long-held brand rules has likewise helped rapidly reverse sales declines. It’s ceding control to influencers, making sub-genre bootleg copies of its brand into fully-fledged campaigns, and diving headlong into the new order of flipped brand codes, micro-moments of attention and fit-for-niche creative as an early backer of the emerging marketing schism around ad wearout, attention and effectiveness versus the “lots of littles” theory and feeding platform machines with tonnes of new ad iterations espoused by Analytic Partners’ Grace Kite and Jellyfish’s Tom Roach. Per McDonald’s marketing, brand, content and culture boss, Jennifer Healan, it's directly driving sales – and there is no divide between brand and performance.