When you go through McDonald’s drive-thru there's one thing that's almost inevitable: eat your fries before you get home.
From this insight was born the latest promotion of McDonald's with the purchase of at least one McMenu, they give you some fries for you to enjoy along the way.
"Sebas&Alicia" is the name of the campaign created by the advertising agency TBWA\Spain. It tells the benefit of the promotion through the love story between a boy passing through McAuto and a girl who works at McDonald's.
The campaign consists in 2 TV commercials with durations of 20" and 10", and a 3-minute video that we can see on McDonald's YouTube channel and on the brand's own social networks.
The campaign has been directed by Maxi Sterle and Rodrigo García Saíz, and the production was directed by Central Films.
It’s an impressive leap by the agency to turn a McDonald’s promotion into an opportunity for brand building and entertainment. There are ten and twenty second cut downs too, but this full length version is worth a watch.
Labelling the EggMcMuffin The Smoothest Burger was an opportunity to create a new advertising language – one that is more modern, more fresh, closer to the digital generation, and able to properly convey this idea of softness. To do so, TBWA\Paris drew inspiration from the internet trend that best fit the product qualities: satisfying animations. They produced fifteen 3D Egg McMuffin Satisfying videos, and created a website to host them, as well as using them for social media communication.
Want to future-proof your brand? Be ready to take risks—and take criticism.
A good marketeer needs to be doing two things at the same time. First, you need to drive sales. I doubt any marketeer will last too long if the brand is tanking in sales. Second, you need to make your brand “future-proof.”
Making the brand “future-proof” requires one to create a vision about how the future will be. If you manage to get to the future first while managing the cost of that journey successfully, chances are you will capture a disproportional amount of market share in the process. Losing that race may end up being costly for your brand. In some cases, being second to something means you end up carrying a lot of cost without getting much credit for it.
I think one doesn’t need to be a marketing visionary to imagine that five to 10 years from now, people will be eating food that doesn’t contain artificial ingredients. In fact, as William Gibson once said, “The future is already here—it’s just not very evenly distributed.” So, if you look at the younger generations, you will see that the desire to eat “clean food” is much greater. At the same time, the perception of “fast food” with these same folks is much more negative.
The main objective of Moldy Whopper—created througha collaboration of David Miami, Ingo and Publicis—was to start shifting the perception of Burger King’s food and, with that, increase consideration to visit our restaurants. From experience, every time we hit a home run with one of our ideas, we end up becoming more top-of-mind, which tends to help drive more visits. But that was not the main objective here, just a side effect of the scale of talkability we receive from ideas like Moldy Whopper.
Moldy Whopper surpassed all of our expectations when it comes to earned media impressions. So far, we earned around 8.4 billion organic media impressions (Sources: Verizon Media and Boxnet).
The quality of the impressions was also very strong. Key media vehicles from all around the globe covered the campaign. And despite the fact that some headlines had a sensationalist tone (classic clickbait strategy), the vast majority of the articles were very positive and clearly landed the main objective of the campaign: no artificial preservatives.
Contrary towhat some articles/analyses reported,sentiment was primarily positive-neutral because of the significant volume news and editorial posts had on sites and Twitter.
We believe there is a clear reason why some articles or analyses reported a sentiment which skewed more negative than the one we are showing here. Many times, the automatic analysis created by tools commonly used to monitor sentiment have limitations with keywords which are negative in theory. We faced this issue in many of our campaigns before. For instance, when we did Bullying Jr. or Whopper Neutrality, key words like “bullying” and “repeal” were interpreted by the algorithm as negatives even when the headlines and conversations were positive.
The same happened with Moldy Whopper. That’s why our team manually categorize the most popular posts—such as highly retweeted or shared articles and posts—that would typically be categorized as negative because they include words like “moldy” or “disgusting.” By manually categorizing them, we can ensure that posts that say things like “ugly but beautiful” or “disgustingly brilliant” are categorized as positive or neutral based on the full context of the post.
The majority (74%) of total conversation occurred on Twitter followed by news channels with 13% of total conversation. The campaign garnered around 600 million potential Twitter impressions. 41% of the conversation was in the form of retweets as users shared posts either from news accounts or other Twitter users. Mentions peaked at noon on the 19th (our press embargo broke early morning that day).
It is also important to highlight that in this campaign, owned content proved to be incredibly engaging to the BK audience, exceeding all KPI benchmarks on all owned platforms. Burger King’s owned tweet was one of the major conversation drivers with about 1,600 retweets.
On Facebook, there were almost 1.4 million total minutes viewed on the Moldy Whopper video, and 39% of total viewers watched all 45 seconds of the video. We typically see users start to drop off at around 4 seconds into a video.
On Twitter, campaign tweet exceeded the organic benchmark engagement rate by 159% and the organic benchmark video view count by 187%. Paid promotion helped to boost reach, but we saw much stronger engagement through our owned audience, which is to be expected.
Instagram content saw strong performance as well, with the in-feed photo exceeding the engagement rate benchmark by 27% and the IG story exceeding benchmark by 59%.
The fact that the creative was varied across platforms also likely led to successful metrics as it helped avoid audience fatigue, which has been a factor in previous campaign performance.
Usually when we do a campaign of this magnitude, we run a quantitative analysis with a robust sample size in the key market driving the campaign (in this case, the United States). So, we leveraged YouGov to run a 2,000-plus sample size research to evaluate, among other things, level of awareness, key brand attributes, and consideration to visitation. We measure all that, comparing people who saw the campaign versus people who did not see the campaign.
The main objective of the campaign was “to start changing the perception of Burger King’s food and, with that, increase consideration to visit our restaurants.”
The level of awareness we reached with this campaign was very high. In other words, this material truly stood out and was seen by a lot of people. Just to illustrate how big Moldy Whopper was, we reached a level of awareness 50% higher than our 2019 Super Bowl campaign(“Eat Like Andy”).And our 2019 Super Bowl campaign was the most talked about, searched, and discussed campaign of the Super Bowl last year. Moldy Whopper generated a significantly larger impact than that on a fraction of the budget.
But did people get it?
The short answer is: Yep, most people did.
And that’s not surprising. Just looking at the word cloud from social media, one can clearly see words like burger, whopper, preservatives, artificial – all of which directly correlate to the message we wanted to land. The word cloud is automatically generated by Crimson Hexagon based on the opinion monitor.
It’s no wonder the awareness around Burger King having no artificial ingredients is 5x higher among people who saw Moldy Whopper than among those who didn’t see Moldy Whopper.
The combination of the level of awareness (cut-through), the clarity of the message (no artificial preservatives) and sentiment (positive-neutral) resulted in a strong impact to all brand attributes we measured.
An important, and surprising, stat: 22.8%
The main objective of the Moldy Whopper campaign was not to drive short-term sales. From my personal experience, the best way to drive short-term sales in our product category is to do a promotion (and the fast food category is filled with them) and/or to launch a new product.
On top of that (and again from personal experience), consumers tend to buy benefits/taste and not the absence of something. When I worked in fast moving consumer goods, I saw lots of product launches fail in sales because the main point communicated was the absence of something instead of the benefit offered by the product. That happened with some Knorr products (cooking aids) which removed artificial ingredients. That happened with some Dove products (body wash) which removed sulfates (harsher surfactants/ soap). Those messages helped elevate the brands, but they didn’t drive short-term sales.
No one in our office was expecting consumers to jump in the car and drive desperately to Burger King to buy a Whopper just because we removed artificial preservatives. We are doing this because it’s the right thing to do and we don’t see a future where fast food brands will have artificial preservatives. So by getting there first, we are making our brand future-proof. And, hopefully, in the long run, this will not only help with sales but mostly avoid the brand becoming irrelevant (and thus lose sales).
With that said, as part of our YouGov research we do measure “consideration to visitation”. This measure basically indicates whether people feel more inclined to visit Burger King if they saw the campaign or not. It’s usually very difficult to see a shift in campaigns which are not price pointed (promotions) or that are not offering a new product.
Moldy Whopper grew consideration to visitation by 22.8%. And that’s truly remarkable.
Sometimes, BK ideas get so much traction that, even when their main objective was not to drive short term sales, we end up seeing an increase in visitation. In a category which is so promotionally driven, raising “top of mind” a little bit can have a positive impact on visitation and thus sales. It happened in the past with campaigns like Eat Like Andy,Google Home of the Whopper,McWhopper, among others. It is still early days to report that, but it’s likely that this one has the potential to accomplish that too.
Why you need the campfire and the fireworks
One common question with Moldy Whopper is: Do you really need to go that far?
Yes.
Yes, we do.
As Bill Bernbach once said, “If no one notices your advertising, everything else is academic”
And it’s not like people are craving to learn that the Burger King brand has removed artificial preservatives from its food. People have other things to do with their lives than focus on the “great things Burger King is doing.” So yes, one needs to push hard for the message to be noticed and become relevant.
Let me use an example to illustrate the point a bit better. By the end of last year, we launched a campaign called “Whopper Prank”. It was a film showing a focus group where we surprised people by serving them a Whopper while pretending it was a burger from a fancy burger place.
This is a pretty decent spot. It tested really well on Link test (short term sales likelihood above 80%). It checked all the boxes. It landed that we are removing artificial ingredients from our food. We aired this spot on TV. We aired a 30 second version of this spot on the pre-Super Bowl slot (which is expensive). We also aired the same version on the post-Super Bowl spot. Results were good. It helped sales. It helped build some of our attributes.
Have you ever seen this spot?
I doubt it.
And the media plan was decent.
Was it a failure? No. It helped the brand. But the impact of a campaign like this is relatively small. We have to do it. We will have more of that. But we need to go above and beyond. If you want to create brand reappraisal, you need the perfect storm. You need the campfire (comfortable, keeps you warm) and the fireworks (explosions). That’s an analogy I am stealing from a chat I had with Brian Collins last week. Whopper Prank is campfire. Moldy Whopper is fireworks. They work in different ways. And they are both needed.
By the way, the sentiment on the safe Whopper Prank on YouTube is 77% positive and 23% negative, which is worse than Moldy Whopper. So, what is really “safe”? Something to think about.
What we learned
To wrap this one up, I would like to reflect on what I believe to be the key things we learned that will help marketers deploy bold ideas like this one.
1. Align on the strategic objectives
I know this may sound obvious, but reality is that many organizations fail to check this box. It is critical that you define with your CEO (or boss) and the top levels of your organization (COO, CFO, Regional Presidents, etc) the key strategic objectives for your brand or company. In our case here, improving the quality of the food we serve by cleaning up the product portfolio from ingredients of artificial sources is a strategic priority. We believe real food tastes better. And if we want to continue to be successful 10 years from now, it’s imperative that we do this work and get credit for it by communicating it.
2. Clearly define what success looks like
After you align on the strategic objective, make sure you define the metrics that will be used to evaluate success of the activity. In the case of Moldy Whopper, the main objective of the campaign was to land the claim of “no artificial preservatives” in order to start shifting people’s perceptions around BK’s food quality. With that in mind, we managed to put the proper KPIs in place to evaluate results. By leveraging this method again and again, one is able to build credibility around the link between the creative approach and the results.
3. Build your credibility
Over time, our organization has become more and more comfortable with feeling uncomfortable. Pushing creative boundaries has become part of our DNA and when people started to realize that, and when done right, the approach works in a powerful way. Defining the strategic objectives and measurements will help you make the discussion less subjective. And if you manage to do it multiple times, it will become easier and easier. I mean, it will become less and less difficult (it’s never easy). One of the biggest compliments I have ever received in my career was when one of our leadership team members came to me as said, “this is a crazy idea, but I feel good about doing it because you believe in it so much”. That’s a good place to be as a marketer.
4. Dare to do something different
I can think of 1,000 reasons (or more) to argue why we shouldn’t do Moldy Whopper. We are all really smart. We can build arguments for and against anything. Who doesn’t have someone in their team who always says, “To play devil’s advocate, what if…”?
We are good at brainstorming about potential problems. So why not use a different approach?
Focus on developing your criteria. Focus on building really strong partnerships with your creative teams. And then go for it because of just one reason. And the reason is: “It’s a mind-blowing idea which perfectly fits our strategic objectives, and I can only think of one brand that can pull it off. And that brand is ours.” This should be enough of a reason to make Moldy Whopper happen.
Organizations are filled with people who can say “no” to things and lack people with conviction to pick fights to say “yes” to bold ideas. Be that “yes” person. It will be good for your brand, good for your company and good for your career. We need more “yes marketers.”
5. Grow a thick skin
This is a really important point. When you do something bold, something that stands out, people will criticize it. This will happen. It always happens—no matter how purposeful, noble or great it is.
And the criticism will show up on your boss’ newsfeed (or inbox). And maybe your boss will come and talk to you. All of that is a side effect of doing something great.
You should surely always interrogate the results, but don’t spend too much time second guessing everything (and yourself). Facing criticism is part of doing something great, something different. If everyone agreed that Moldy Whopper was good, then it was probably not that good to start with. Unfortunately, throughout my entire career, I only saw convergence of opinions with things that were flat, common, and cliché.
So if you want to aim high, get ready for criticism. It’s part of the package.
Kraft Foods has decided to re-brand A.1. by removing "steak" from their name and encouraging people to use the sauce on almost everything.
The posted this screenshot of their Facebook fan page changing their relationship with steak to "it's complicated."
Consumers can be resistant to a re-branding if your product has been solidified in their mind as one thing, but using humor and social media is a great way to build awareness and get people excited.
Doritos utilizes two great strategies in this campaign: highlighting user-generated content and building off of the buzz from a huge event -- the Superbowl. This social media contest allows fans to submit their Doritios commercials and the winner gets their video on TV during the Superbowl, along with other cool prizes.
Honey Bunches of Oatsran a campaign with the tagline “50 Million Smiles and Counting,” during which they shared the testimonial videos, images, and quotes from fans they had "made smile" across the country in exchange for a chance to win an all-expenses paid trip. By sharing the user-submitted content across Facebook and Instagram, they were able to add 162,000 new fans (a 721% increase) and increase engagement and traffic to their pages.
There’s never been a better time to be a food brand.
However, as each year passes, big food becomes a little less relevant, as a new wave of food brands that better meet the heightened expectations of food lovers are stealing market share across the globe.
Knorr, as the biggest cooking brand in the world, had to evolve to stay relevant.
The first step in this progression, was to better understand the power of flavour in people’s lives.
PHD conducted a study amongst 12,000 people in 12 markets and what itfound out intrigued and inspired...
The majority of people surveyed would rather give up sex, their careers, their social media profiles and even their right to vote over flavour; but even more intriguing was the importance of flavour in relationships.
78% of people would be more attracted to their partner if they enjoyed the same flavours.
One in threeclaim that if their partner didn’t share the same flavour palette, they would be worried about their long-term future together.
Flavour was more powerful than the agencythought.
Strategy
Having discovered flavour was a key component of compatibility, the agencywould use this insight to inspire an activation that would help it connect with food lovers and food culture in a more authentic, relevant and talkable manner than ever before.
It would explore whether someone’s flavour personality, determined by the Knorr Flavour Profiler, a digital tool PHDlaunched with the campaign, could ultimately help people find #LoveAtFirstTaste.
A social experiment, captured as a film, would spark intrigue and interest across the world, inspiring others to do the same and find out their own Knorr Flavour Profile along the way.
In order to give both the creative idea and the digital tools that supported it the best chance of doing the job they had been designed to do, the role for media was focused on three areas: -
1.Give the whole world the chance to experience #LoveAtFirstTaste - By distributing the hero film and associated edits in the newsfeeds and the viewsfeeds of food lovers across the world, it would spark conversation and desire for people to determine their own flavour profile.
2.Take the Knorr Flavour Profiler out of the hub and into the newsfeed - To scale the impact and efficacy of the profiler, bespoke partnerships with tech platform PlayBuzz and Social Food Juggernaut TasteMade, would natively seed the profiler and the meal inspiration that sat inside it across the open and social web, opening up new sources of attention for the brand and creating alternative routes into the profiler.
3.Relentlessly pursue marginal gains in distribution - A synchronised media and PR launch across 12 markets within a campaign command centre at Unilever HQ, would allow the agencyto understand which assets were most effective in unlocking the attention and action of audiences in each market itactivated in, thus increasing the reach and resonance of the campaign for each € deployed.
Execution
In order to give #LoveAtFirstTaste the best chance of penetrating popular culture, the agencyneeded a quick start, so itsynchronised PR coverage andaccelerated video distribution across the largest video and social platforms on the web.
In a first for Twitter, PHDcombined ‘First View’ with ‘Conversational Video’ cards, to pose the question as to whether people believed in #LoveAtFirstGlance or #LoveAtFirstTaste.
On Facebook, itreached all available ‘foodies’ across its Top 10 markets through the opening days of the command centre – dropping into the newsfeeds of over 150M people across the Globe.
To scale beyond the newsfeed, the agencyused YouTube’s TrueView and Unruly’s emotional targeting to reach people pre-disposed to engage with thehero film.
Once it hadreached critical mass, PHDlaunched bespoke media partnerships with PlayBuzz & Tastemade, to scale the impact and efficacy of the Knorr Flavour Profiler beyond thewebsite.
PlayBuzz rebuilt and natively distributed the profiler via thousands of publishers across the open web, whilst Tastemade built a ‘hands-on’ recipe video series inspired by the profiler, distributed on their owned platforms, as well as by the agencyto target foodies, need-states and flavour preferences across Facebook, Instagram & Twitter in firsts for the brand.
With all assets and activities controlled via a command centre at Unilever HQ, the agency was able to monitor and act upon the cost of distribution, the social reaction, the media’s reaction to and brand impact of arange of assets in real time, scaling optimisations globally with immediate effect.
Results
#LoveAtFirstTaste captured the attention and imagination of the newsfeeds and the viewsfeeds across the globe.
Currently sitting at 112M views across all platforms, and topping the viral charts, not only did people engage with the story (2x audience retention for films of a similar length), itcreated a spark that triggered a huge social reaction in Knorr'sfavour, with over 2.7M social actions taking place in the first two weeks, 400K Likes and 200K shares of the main film and associated assets; with 1.87M clicking to find out their own flavour profile.
As anticipated, the media partnerships scaled the impact of the Knorr Flavour Profiler, with PlayBuzz doubling the volume of people engaging with it, with less than 10% of the campaign budget, whilst Tastemade’s hands-on recipe series has driven 9M views of Knorr product demos, with completion rates over 10x higher and share rates over 50x higher than typical advertising on Facebook.
This groundswell of interest triggered a huge reaction from the media, with the campaign receiving coverage on talkshows, radio stations, newspapers and websites across the globe, generating 1.4 billion PR impressions along the way.
Brand favourability is shifting where results are available: US +1500bps, France +900bps, UK +900bps… and market share increased by 140bps in May, during and immediately after the campaign.
There’s no such thing as bad publicity. Or is there? With a following of over 2.1 million Super Fans, KFC Arabia is the region’s largest quick service restaurant brand on social media. It generates conversations across all platforms, mainly among young Arab men. But what happens when negative chatter pops up around the brand? KFC was about to launch a new campaign endorsed by famed footballer Cristiano Ronaldo. But just prior to the launch, the KFC brand seemed to be experiencing quite a bit of negative online buzz. Although KFC had full control over the assets it owned, there was little it could do elsewhere. Initiative needed to find a way to deviate all the negative conversation around KFC and protect its investment behind the upcoming Ronaldo campaign. After analysing sales and delivery trends, the agency noted a dramatic increase of group and family meals whenever a football game was televised. The upcoming ‘Clasico’ match would be among the most viewed and talked about games of the season. If KFC played its cards right, it was something that it could use to its advantage. The objectives were to: - Turn negative online social conversation into positive engagements - Increase overall brand sentiment - Increase social media engagement on KFC owned platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube
By doing so, KFC expected to see an uplift in store footfall and deliveries on game day and continue on once the Ronaldo campaign was in effect.
Strategy
There is nothing quite like a major sports rivalry! Think Borg vs. McEnroe, Prost vs. Senna, Tyson vs. Holyfield. A little healthy competition makes for great fodder for any brand. Add a little controversy, and you’ve scored big time.
Football is the biggest and most popular sport in the region, and KFC Arabia has associated itself with leading football legends since 2010. Three years ago, when KFC signed on Lionel Messi, it saw loads of buzz erupt in the social sphere, making light-hearted fun of KFC’s partnership with the FC Barcelona player. Fans created jokes, memes and other visual materials that quickly went viral throughout the region. Engagement levels on KFC Arabia’s Facebook page also showed an all-time high every time KFC posted about a ‘Clasico’ match – or any football related topic really – from fans mocking the other side or cheering on their respective team. History proves that rivalry is a great platform for fan interaction. And even though KFC had quite a few legends attached to the brand previously, it decided to approach ‘rivalry’ from a brand new perspective. Leveraging the region’s love for football, KFC wanted to be bold, and fuel conversations that build upon the rivalry of Cristiano Ronaldo fans versus Lionel Messi fans. KFC’s plan was simple: A little audacity and a whole lot of fan interaction. KFC knew that KFC Arabia’s partnership with Cristiano Ronaldo would trigger tons of instant reactions from his fans and Messi fans alike. And the brand was ready to make its move.
Execution
Blog Talk: Knowing that home deliveries spike on game days, KFC secretly released KFC buckets with Ronaldo’s image during an FC Barcelona match. This would surely cause a stir, especially among Messi fans. As it turned out, FC Barcelona lost quite badly, and fans were taunted with Ronaldo’s face staring up at them. With the help of bloggers, KFC used this incident to launch a social media frenzy! Social Media Soiree: Once the campaign was released, it was game on. The action became the perfect opportunity for KFC to join the conversation, leveraging content that would now become even more relevant. Sc Augmented Reality Happenings: The rivalry continued as KFC released an augmented reality mobile app where fans could take a realistic photo of themselves standing next to Ronaldo in their own surroundings. Ronaldo fans used it to brag, with photos together with him in their living rooms, backyards, or offices. While Messi fans mocked them, posing with Ronaldo next to garbage dumps or toilets. KFC fuelled the fire by seeding exciting football content to stir the Ronaldo vs. Messi fan rivalry and was front and centre creating brand association with every user generated photo, meme or tweet.
ores of fans posted on social media, commenting on the new endorsement, spreading the news like wildfire with posts, jokes, photos and memes. Ronaldo fans mocked Messi for being replaced by Ronaldo, with depictions of Messi working in a KFC kitchen. And Messi fans retaliated with their own jokes and memes.
Results
Online interactions were through the roof! Social media conversation increased by 137% during the campaign and brand sentiment was up 20%. The Ronaldo photo initiative generated over 65,000 shares in only 45 days, and countless other shares that KFC are unable to track (e.g., Whatsapp, SMS, email, etc.)
Despite 30 years of major sponsorships, McDonald’s is still not perceived to be an entirely ‘appropriate’ sponsor of the FIFA World Cup. The brand had to find a positioning which stayed true to the brand with its core values of fun and entertainment, but also brought its global sponsorship of the FIFA World Cup 2014, to life.
Unfortunately for McDonald’s, lacking appropriateness during the most cluttered time for brands, also meant simple
association with the event was a challenge. It was spending millions of dollars sponsoring events which people did not know it sponsored, or why it sponsored them. McDonald’s had to find a way to compete with the daily communication from the sponsors who were viewed as being ‘appropriate’, in a credible and fun way.
To do this, McDonald’s had to move away from talking about “Passion” or “The Fans”, and find its own space in sport. The final hurdle was to drive footfall to McDonald’s during the tournament period. To meet this challenge, McDonald’s changed its Fry Boxes Globally, for the first time. It created 12 country designs from famous designers across the world. It was OMD’s challenge to hero these new designs and ensure they would make an impact outside of the restaurant, whilst also making them appealing enough to get people to visit the restaurant.
In short, OMD had to create content which credibly associated McDonald’s with the FIFA World Cup before the tournament and redefine its sports sponsorship positioning… whilst selling products globally.
Strategy
To improve McDonald’s perceived appropriateness it had to become more relevant to sports fans. However, this couldn’t be done with a traditional McDonald’s campaign: research from previous tournaments showed that talking about McDonald’s World Cup association generically did not cut through the clutter. The brand had to associate itself with the most relevant World Cup moments at the most relevant time: ‘authentic in real-time’ became McDonald’s new FIFA strategy.
OMD created FryFutbol. In the lead-up to the tournament McDonald’s would recreate famous World Cup moments and 2014 plays using their famous fries. The strategy needed to be flexible and quick enough to make an impact every day, with scale; however, the relevance of a sporting moment differs by country, so this flexible strategy ensured the agency could create neutral content when necessary, speak to its audience in a locally relevant tone and up-weight media activity based on each country’s view of the moment.
A team was available 24/7 to create high quality content throughout the tournament that was, crucially, exclusively ownable by McDonald’s. Pre-tournament videos were created after extensive research into the three most iconic moments relevant across every European market and it launched heavily with these moments just as excitement for the World Cup reached fever pitch.
McDonald’s also needed to be in people’s News Feed the day after a match as they were catching up on the action and commentary, otherwise the relevance of the content would diminish rapidly. It was this dynamic, fun strategy which would readdress McDonald’s association with the World Cup.
The content also drove people in-store by allowing them to interact with football content in restaurants – it provided them with something fun to do so that they wouldn’t want to leave and thought of McDonald’s as a great place to be during the World Cup.
Execution
FryFutbol recreated iconic moments in the build up to the World Cup and then recreated the major moments of every day’s play during the World Cup, all in an entertaining Fry World.
In all, McDonald’s used 10,000 fries as supporters and players, 10 hand puppeteers and more than 1,000 Fry props to create the videos. All of this helped to create 30 FryFutbol videos depicting famous and current football moments. All videos were distributed and optimised by market. This meant no support for videos depicting moments which were ‘against’ a given country, whilst up-weighting strong moments.
The strategy was played out to perfection across the World’s Facebook News Feeds, YouTube mastheads, Sports websites and blogs across Europe. Everyone was checking to see the FryFutbol action, before they wanted to see the real-life highlights!
This was the first time Facebook had created content for a partner, the first time the media agency had created content for all Global McDonald’s markets and the first time McDonald’s had activated one consistent campaign with video content, across the world.
OMD also had to ensure that everything linked back to new Fry Boxes in-store. Therefore, McDonald’s created an augmented reality app which interacted with all 1.2 billion new boxes and allowed users to create trickshots using obstacles in-store e.g. their drinks carton. These were featured in the FryFutbol videos. For the first time, it created a reason for McDonald’s to be associated with the World Cup and created interaction with results in-store.
Results
Over 1 billion Fry Boxes sold! This is the most sold in a comparable period, ever.
Appropriateness scores had the greatest change between pre and during the campaign (+5%), with expected post tournament scores higher than any other major sponsorship for McDonald’s (+10%).
What started as a European campaign in 39 countries, was taken in every major continent and all major McDonald’s markets. It was the campaign of ‘firsts’, and the results reflected the huge impact that this campaign had on the McDonald’s brand globally; • Leading up to the World Cup, McDonald’s had the highest ranked app in a number of markets globally - the first time it had ever done this across more than one country at any given time. • FryFutbol videos were the most viewed single piece of content for McDonald’s ever (50m+ views) • Most ‘Liked’ campaign content in McDonald’s history (+5m Likes).
