NBA star Devin Booker grew up going to the McDonald’s in Sedona, Arizona, which is famous for swapping the brand’s traditional golden arches for turquoise ones that match the red rock scenery. So when the Phoenix Suns player started sketching ideas for his second signature Nike sneaker, those arches became inspiration.
The result is the Nike Book 2 McDonald’s: a white basketball shoe with a turquoise Nike Swoosh and golden arch. To promote the launch, Nike, McDonald’s, and Wieden+Kennedy New York turned Booker’s longtime habit of hiding signed, unreleased sneakers in public into a scavenger hunt that sent fans into the Arizona desert chasing cryptic clues, eerie Ronald McDonald statues, and a pair of limited-edition sneakers.
As the former McDonald’s All-American athlete considered how to launch the shoe, his team worked with Wieden+Kennedy, creative agency for both McDonald’s and Nike, to give fans access to something unexpected: the Nike Book 2 McDonald’s Friends and Family edition, a second limited-edition sneaker in all turquoise.
With sneaker-drop culture and Booker’s previous “Finders Keepers” hunts in mind, fans weren’t handed the details in a carefully packaged press release. Instead, the shoes were treated like a rare discovery—much like turquoise in the desert—with clues directing fans toward the Sedona McDonald’s.
Alongside immersive billboards in New York, Los Angeles, and Sedona, clues were hidden in a series of social films. Shot against a mysterious desert backdrop with a vintage camcorder, the videos created a found-footage effect.
Posted with the question “Ronald?”, the first film shows an old-school Ronald McDonald statue—once a staple of restaurants from the 1970s through the 2000s—sitting on a bench at the edge of a desert cliff, wearing a distinctive pair of turquoise shoes.
