2019 Winners & Shortlists

WORLD CUP DRIVE-THRU EXPERIENCE

BrandMCDONALD'S
Product/ServiceDRIVE-THRU
EntrantWEBER SHANDWICK MENA Kuwait City, KUWAIT
CategoryGuerrilla Marketing & Stunts
Idea Creation WEBER SHANDWICK MENA Kuwait City, KUWAIT
PR WEBER SHANDWICK MENA Kuwait City, KUWAIT

Why is this work relevant for Brand Experience & Activation?

The McDonald’s brand promise, at the heart of everything it does, is creating delicious “feel-good moments” for everyone. That translates to a commitment to offering up a rich all-around experience that goes beyond simply great food. Therefore, when the FIFA 2018 World Cup rolled around, we had a golden opportunity to create a genuine, feel-good moment experience that would not only celebrate McDonald’s decades-long partnership with FIFA, but also as a showcase for food trust and quality messages; engaging audiences and generating conversations whilst simultaneously communicating our quality and halal key messages.

Background

Every brand under the sun in Kuwait was jumping on the World Cup band wagon: hosting screenings, having special offers, branding merchandise, etc. In the food and beverage industry specifically, the market was saturated with generic World Cup meals, offers and promotions. But McDonald’s was different: an official sponsor of the world’s biggest football extravaganza, and the only restaurant at that, which meant we had to go bigger and better than everyone else to create a World Cup-worthy brand experience. Our solution was to create an unforgettable football experience that was all McDonald’s – and would still enable us to push our quality messages in a way that would resonate.

Describe the creative idea.

We decided to transform the McDonald’s Drive-Thru experience into something straight out of a World Cup game – with quality messages blasting out of speakers rather than gameplay. And that was the main idea: we would borrow the voice of football and make it the voice of McDonald’s for a night. Football fans are passionate about their love of the sport: they love the teams, the players, the thrill and action, and they even love the voices behind the game. Announcers have become bona fide superstars in their own right, especially in the Middle East; an integral part of the football experience. Most people might not know the faces, they might not even know the names – but they definitely know the voices. So we went to the biggest voice in football in the Arab world: Raouf Khalif, one of the first, most popular and instantly recognizable voices of football.

Describe the strategy.

We knew that football has always been a great tool for engagement with McDonald’s fans and customers. On social media, football themed competitions see an average 43% higher engagement than other activations. We also knew that people were not paying attention to our quality messages. Early in 2018, we commissioned a perception audit to understand what the local audience really thought of McDonald’s. Despite constantly and consistently pushing out quality messages on all channels, we found that people did not believe McDonald’s produced “high quality food” (46% saying no to that). Therefore, we set out to create a unique experience that would capitalize on the World Cup hype to creatively push two of our biggest messages: creating feel good moments and delivering high quality food.

Describe the execution

The activation needed three teams working simultaneously alongside the McDonald’s operations, with three sound systems, three cameramen and seven stationary cameras. Raouf was stationed at the Drive-Thru window, alongside one team feeding him messages and filming. Another team was stationed at the entrance, filtering incoming customers and coordinating with the others. A third team was ready at the end of the Drive-Thru to capture reactions. When customers placed their order at the Drive-Thru order kiosk, Raouf jumped into action. He narrated the order in his signature game-announcing style, peppering his speech with food trust, quality and halal messages being provided to him. Raouf used his trademark phrases to bring the thrill of watching a championship game to the McDonald’s experience (his famous catchphrase “nar ya habiby nar” (fire baby, fire) was perfect for spicy items). Safe to say, people lost their minds when his voice boomed through the speakers.

List the results.

Since our campaign was mostly run on digital channels, reach and impression numbers were one of our biggest metrics in gauging success. Our video became a viral sensation – in fact, the biggest one yet for McDonald’s. In addition to generating almost 425,000 views on YouTube and almost 190,000 views on Instagram, the video was reposted organically 1,928 times – with an estimated reach of almost 20,000,000. And from the beginning that was one of our main objectives with McDonald’s: go viral – and we managed to do just that. Furthermore, market research commissioned by McDonald’s indicated that the identification of McDonald’s as the “Favorite quick service restaurant” increased by 5% while all other competitors where decreasing. And the cherry on top: sales of the World Cup special offer at McDonald’s increased by 9% following our campaign going live.

Credits

Name Company Role
Faisal Khazal Weber Shandwick Associate Director
Laila Al-Daghestani Weber Shandwick Associate Director
Links
Video URL