Travel, Leisure, Retail, Restaurants & Fast Food Chains
Idea Creation
FP7/BEY Beirut, LEBANON
Media Placement
UM MENA Beirut, LEBANON
Why is this work relevant for Media?
During the world cup, people just forget about McDonald’s. People go to restaurants that offer bundle deals or air the games on giant screens. Two things we didn’t do. We needed to make McDonald’s relevant again. So we identified the target that would most allow us to achieve that: the losing fans. By creating content specially designed for them, we waited for winners to tag their losing friends on our videos acting as the campaign's main medium. We created a custom segment that grew with every game and used it to keep driving our engagement rates upwards.
Background.
Every world cup McDonald's loses big. People just forget about us because they want a restaurant that airs the games or offer big bundle deals. We needed to drive people back to our stores with a very small budget.
We thought: how can we be relevant during the world cup without having to spend a lot of money and at the same time be able to drive people to the store with coupons and freebies?
We needed to create content people can engage with so that we serve them promo codes using that content. Our objectives were therefore:
Aim at +20% versus category benchmark in engagement rate
+20% in engagement rate versus McDonald’s page monthly average
+60% in gathered social media fans
12% in guest counts from May till July. (usual average increase)
Increase of 20% in guest counts June 2018 versus June 2014
Describe the creative idea/insights
The official sponsor of losers was this year's McDonald's world cup campaign. The idea consisted of turning our Facebook page into a sort of publishing page. With over 100 pieces of content in just one month we were on a mission to cheer all losing fans up. We launched with a video of one of the biggest losers of them all: an Italian fan, knowing that this year Italy didn't even qualify. He was a semi-famous influencer in Lebanon known for his cheeky content and popularity with the masses. We called him Mr. Cheers and he spearheaded all the videos, promo codes, social media responses and reactive content we created to always send good vibes to all the losers (and winners too). The key was to create content that reconciled losers to actually get winners to do what they do best: tag every losing friend they know on our content.
Describe the strategy.
We looked at McDonald's sales during every world cup. And it wasn't pretty. Since everyone went to restaurants that aired the games (something we didn't do) or ordered big bundle deals for home delivery (Something we also didn't do) we needed to drive people back to our stores and/or our delivery center. Problem was: we had very little budget to do so.
So we looked at the target: football fans and saw that they were 3 times as active on social during the world cup than on regular days, mainly to voice their expert opinion on football or to talk about their teams winning or losing.
Knowing that McDonald's was all about inclusivity we decided to approach all those fans that felt left out once their teams got knocked out. After all most fans will have their teams loosing bringing them together with other fans as one big loser group.
Describe the execution.
Mr. Cheers’ debut was 10 days before the world cup with a film on social promising all losers that he will be there when their team loses.
When the world cup started we featured Mr. Cheers recapping the games while cheekily making losers feel better. This drew winners to tag their losing friends and losing fans to share our sarcastic content, which allowed us to respond to everyone with online promo codes.
We then launched the second phase which saw Mr. Cheers go on ground. As of the semi finals, he would be seen in public screening areas distributing freebies to losing fans and recruiting them to a very special loyalty program with exclusive discounts: the losers club. The more the world-cup progressed the bigger the club got. At the end we let losing fans to exchange all their cheering material like flags with freebies.
List the results.
BETTING ON THE LOSERS MADE US WIN BIG.
We were able to engage all types of fans and eventually drive them to our branches, delivery center or online delivery portal with our offers and promo codes, all initiated for the sake of cheering losers up.
+213% more engagement vs. category benchmark
+173% in social media fans against monthly growth average
+203% more post interaction on our page versus monthly average
+130% more shares versus monthly average
+327% more in completion rates versus category benchmark
+ 208% more engagement versus world cup initiatives done in the category
Average increase of 24% in guest counts from May till July 2018
Increase of 77% in guest counts June 2018 versus June 2014 leading to an 89% increase in sales versus the same period last year