McDonald's uses licensing very productively to create value for the brand. McDonald's works alongside IMG and The Joester Loria Group (agencies that help customers expand their marketing approaches) to create an attractive and promising licensing program. An extremely beneficial way of licensing is the collaboration of McDonald's with popular celebrities and other companies. McDonald's has somewhat recently collaborated with several famous artists such as Saweetie, Travis Scott, J Balvin, and BTS. Using widely known names like these will attract not only regular customers of McDonald's, but also fans of these popular influencers who are just interested in the presentation of the collaboration. McDonald's has also partnered with large brands such as Krispy Kreme, Disney, Target, Walmart, the NBA, etc. to create value for their products. McDonald's has worked with several of these companies to advertise their own products in their restaurants (Krispy Kreme; Disney; NBA), but they also have worked with brands by having companies like Target and Walmart promote McDonald's merchandise in their stores. Licensing is crucial for creating value in marketing because it enables the brand (McDonald's) to make itself a widely known franchise and increase the purchase of their products. In addition to benefitting the franchise itself, it also benefits the people and other brands that collaborated with them by increasing their popularity through advertisement by a fast-food franchise that everybody loves. Licensing brings many opportunities to companies and can greatly increase the value of their products.

McDonald’s can use licensing to expand its brand and create value by allowing other companies to produce and sell products under its name. For example, it licenses its brand to food manufacturers to create McDonalds-themed grocery items like frozen fries and McCafe coffee sold in stores. It also partners with toy companies for Happy Meal promotions, reinforcing brand recognition among children. Licensing extends McDonald’s presence beyond its restaurants, generating additional revenue while strengthening brand loyalty. They also do collabs with different creators such as musical artists and popular video games.

In the case of McDonald's, they use licensing in order to create value for their brand in several manners. Some of these are particularly aimed at specific groups of consumers. In the case of Happy Meals, toys are often included in order to gain more attention and traction from younger audiences. To younger customers, the value may not necessarily come from the meal as much as from the actual toy. Another instance comes in the form of cooperative branding between brands. Recently, McDonald's has become a brand name sponsor for the premier French football league. This gives them exposure overseas, and creates value for fans of the league by investing financially in it in order to obtain that name sponsor.