2016 Winners & Shortlists

ORIGAMI TRAY MAT

BrandMCDONALD'S EGYPT
Product/ServiceQUICK SERVICE RESTAURANTS
EntrantFP7/CAI Cairo, EGYPT
CategoryUse of Merchandising / In-Store Marketing
Entrant Company FP7/CAI Cairo, EGYPT
Advertising Agency FP7/CAI Cairo, EGYPT

The Brief

Consumers are becoming more health conscious and more concerned with the quality of food they eat. Since “quality” is one of McDonald’s values, McDonald’s tried to deliver facts about ingredients through the tray-mat in the past, but failed to grab consumers’ attention. For years, people misused tray-mats as sheet-like-plates and rarely did they read anything on them. Our challenge was to find an interesting way to talk about our ingredients, on a medium that was often ignored. We accordingly created an engaging two-way communication channel via the tray-mat, giving it a more interesting fate than where it usually ended up.

Creative Execution

To get our quality messages across to consumers in an interesting way we created a promotion using the tray-mat and gave a chance for consumers to actually interact with it. Instead of having another boring tray-mat with paragraphs of facts written on it, this tray-mat was split into six different squares; one contained information about McDonald’s fine quality and the other five showed the main food ingredients of McDonald's (beef, chicken, vegetables, egg and potato), stating quality facts about them. To further entice the consumers with the game, we created an offer; if they successfully complete an origami shape, they get a free menu item corresponding to the main ingredient in their upcoming visit. The campaign ran for around two months, from the 26th of October 2015 till the 30th of December 2015 and took place across all the stores in Cairo.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

By offering consumers a fun activity, we managed to turn a stagnant medium to an in-store interactive way of getting our message across, revealing a fact about each ingredient once its shape was completed. The campaign was a success, creating an unusual bond between the brand and the consumer. Even though the average redemption rate of any in-store coupon-based promotion McDonald’s carries out is around 10%, this promotion managed to reach double that with a redemption rate of 20%. The consumers got the information they needed to know about McDonald’s quality in an interesting and engaging way.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

Tray-mats are given to each and every person that places an order inside McDonald’s stores. Approximately 35,000 tray-mats are distributed among consumers everyday. Not only does the tray-mat serve as a clean sheet of paper to place the food on but also as a communication medium. Because every consumer that comes in to make an order receives one, it is considered to be one of the most effective means of communication to reach each individual personally, rather than on a mass level. With this campaign, the tray-mat was designed in the form of a game that allowed consumers to redeem free menu items in their upcoming visit upon completion of the game.

Credits

Name Company Role
Ahmed Hafez Younees FP7/CAI Executive Creative Director
Mostafa Abdelmawla FP7/CAI Graphic Designer
Nour AbdelHamid FP7/CAI Copywriter
Moheb Samir FP7/CAI Studio Manager
Khaled Esmail FP7/CAI Senior Studio Finalizer
Farah Mansour FP7/CAI Account Director
Youssef El Tohamy FP7/CAI Account Supervisor