Creative Corner: Forest Bikes' £1 rides, McDonald's shortcuts and a cheeky carousel from IAMS

This week’s Creative Corner takes a look at three campaigns with one common thread: sharp observation turned into standout creative.

From a viral £1 jingle from Forest Bikes that hijack London’s streets, to real-world shortcuts reframed as media for McDonald's, to a baggage claim you can’t ignore to promote IAMS pet food, these ideas prove impact doesn’t always come from shouting louder, but from seeing smarter.

Forest Bikes £1 ride. Very, very good

Starting this week with a campaign that has deservedly caught fire on socials, the brilliant £1 ride campaign from Forest Bikes.

It’s got everything you could wish for. Catchy jingle, bit of cheeky rival baiting and the return of a familiar face; the viral sensation that is "£1 Fish Man". This in-house campaign leverages his cult status to highlight Forest's enticing offer: 30-minute e-bike rides for just £1.

The campaign kicked off on social media, racking up millions of views across TikTok and Instagram in a matter of days as the now renamed £1 ride man offers up his “very, very good” £1 rides to Londoners. Aside from brilliantly planting the £1 offer earworm in your head, the rewritten “£1 fish” jingle satisfyingly manages to take a cheeky little swipe at rival bike operator Lime with the immortal lines “Wanna take a Lime?”, “No thanks please”, “Wanna take a Lime”, “Expensive”.

Beyond the catchy social creative, digital billboards featuring the "£1 ride man" have appeared on Blackfriars Road, one of the busiest London cycling routes.

It’s a promotional master class in my mind and if it doesn’t win an effectiveness award of some sort we may as well all give up. 

McDonald's shortcuts... I’m lovin’ it

Vision in creativity isn’t just about having big, groundbreaking ideas. Great creatives notice what others overlook, seeing patterns in real life, connecting the unrelated and framing familiar things in new ways.

And that’s exactly what the creatives behind this McDonald's campaign in the Netherlands have done with their interpretation of everyday shortcuts.

By taking something both obvious: when people want something, they find the fastest way to it, they traced destination shortcuts that already exist that just happen to lead to the Golden Arches. No artifice or AI, no exaggeration. Just real terrain, worn down by repeated intent.

Photographed as found, each image captures a truth: shortcuts don’t appear without purpose. They are evidence of desire in motion. In this case, the route to a Big Mac.

Proof that ideas aren’t always invented, it can be about noticing what’s already there.

IAMS serves up a smooth delivery

We’ve all been there. The long wait for your luggage as you pray that the carousel spits out your battered suitcase from the hole in the wall.

You could say you spend a disproportionate amount of your holiday staring at that luggage carousel and it’s an observation that pet food brand IAMS have cheekily played with to promote pet nutrition.

Anticipant baggage retrievers at Orlando Sanford International Airport were greeted with a cheeky line-up. Suspended above the moving carousel, billboards of unmissable proportions featured a humorous parade of dog and cat rears perfectly aligned with the carousel hole in the wall as they oversaw the ‘smooth delivery’ of the traveller's luggage.

The campaign spotlights the science behind the IAMS PROACTIVE 5 system, specifically its use of prebiotic fibre to support healthy digestion.

It’s not the kind of message people expect to encounter while waiting for their suitcase. Disruption, here, is doing the heavy lifting (as well as the luggers of memorabilia stuffed luggage).

The campaign features Brodie, the internet-famous doodle who is behind one of the featured rears and looks remarkably like my own doodle Buddy (note to self, must get Buddy an agent).

That wraps up another edition of Creative Corner!

As always, if you're working on something that deserves the spotlight, or you've seen a campaign worth sharing, drop us a line: paul.lucas@fanclubpr.com