The Brief

This summer, we had to reconnect with kids and family. But how do you get parents to bring their children to McDonald’s when the kids’ summer is already filled with tutoring classes and extra curricula activity? We gave them another activity to work on, one that let the kids express their creativity and showed their parents’ how amazing their kids can be when they are allowed to just be kids.

Creative Execution

We gave the kids our restaurant as a canvass and asked them, ‘If you could build the McDonald’s of your dream, what will it be’. Then we made it a reality and built the world’s McDonald’s restaurant that is entirely designed by kids, for kids. What did we sell in the restaurant? Only Happy Meals, of course. And to show parent’s the power of imagination, we auctioned off the items in the restaurant to raise money to help the kids at Ronald McDonald Home Charities. The campaign was activated across a broad range of media, including: TVC, print, outdoor, internet banners, a campaign website, instore, Facebook and PR events.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

Our creative solution was to create the first ever McDonald’s restaurant that was entirely designed by kids, for kids. This necessitated a vast direct response - we needed kids to send us their ideas. We put out a simple question: “If you could build the McDonald’s of your dreams, what would it look like?” We had expected a few hundred responses, but ultimately we got thousands. Kids sent in truckloads of ideas by post, and more drew their designs directly on our website and in our restaurants. All across Hong Kong, kids, families, schools, and even major companies got involved.

Results

5.2 million in earned media. Within the space of 3 weeks we got over 10,000 entries. Close to 60,000 votes for the designs. Sold all the items in the store and raised almost $500,000 for charity. And the result we are most proud. Thousands of happy kids and parents.