The Campaign

Challenge: Chinese people love chicken, so much so, that 70% of set meals sold at McDonald’s in China are chicken burger combos. In the rest of the world the beef burger is the champion and is loved by all. We needed to ignite China’s love affair with the McDonald’s Beef Burger. Objective: Our main objective was to make Chinese men want our Beef burgers, and to big up our ‘100% beef’ quality credentials. Insight: Men in China were loosing touch with their manly side. They have become clean cut, coiffured and manicured, shadows of their former selves. Many men want to liberate themselves from this, and want to get back to a simpler time where they could act as nature intended and not feel ashamed. They wanted to be MEN and to feel PROUD to be so.

Success of the Campaign

Results: - Men ate more beef burgers. Beef category sales increased by 87% during the campaign. - The ‘100% superior beef’ quality message also resonated more with our manly consumers compared to 2011. Recognition was up 25% in Shanghai, up 30% in Guangzhou, and was 12% higher than the norm in Beijing. Overall sales of all beef combo sets vs. 2011 increased by a whopping 28.4%, and sales of the extra value meal increased by 8.6%. During the campaign period, 40% of consumers visited McDonald’s more frequently and spent 10% more in the restaurant. During the campaign period, 25.6 million online impressions were generated through the digital campaign and IWOM platform ads. People interacted with the brand content over 5 million times, and online consumers generated a total of 559,000 topic threads.

Describe how the campaign/entry was launched and executed across each channel in the order of implementation.

One 8 week campaign TVC: We studied the characteristics of men from different areas around China, and developed one national thematic TVC and four tailor-made TVCs that paid tribute to local manliness in a light-hearted way. OOH: We also created the ‘100 Ways to be a Manly Man’ outdoor campaign. We dominated subway stations and trains and gave men manly advice. Here men were tutored on how to hail a cab, how to sit at a bar, and how to answer a phone in a manly way. Digital: We amplified our idea by creating the ‘Valentine Big Mac Box’ (comprising of a customized manly man t-shirt), and collaborated with an online shopping site to market these as the manly gifts for your man during Valentine’s Day. Each t-shirt was printed with cheeky line that paid tribute to man’s manly spirit and to the attributes of our prized beef burgers.