The Brief

This campaign helped McDonalds reinvigorate a fading icon and revive burger sales, by getting the next generation of burger eaters – millennials – to experience how everything tastes better when it tastes like a Big Mac. To do this we made Big Mac a part of popular conversation again, by taking the most iconic part of the burger, the Special Sauce, to millennials to do what they wanted with it, to #macitbetter. In a world first, McDonald’s Australia released the Special Sauce in a limited run of 200 bottles. Our idea first asked our audience to bid for Special Sauce bottle no.1 on eBay driving huge demand for the sauce and attracting a highest bid of $23,600 for the auction (with proceeds to go to Ronald McDonald House Charities). We then took to the streets around popular eateries with smaller sauce tubs and a tweet powered vending machine, prompting anyone to get the taste of the legend by calling on them to #macitbetter.

Creative Execution

Our idea enabled access to something previously locked into the Big Mac - the Special Sauce. In a world first, McDonald’s Australia released the Special Sauce in a limited run of 200 bottles. To dramatise the exclusivity of the Special Sauce release, we placed bottle no.1 on eBay and asked people to bid for it. The remaining 199 coveted bottles of Special Sauce were sent to select millennial influencers inviting them to share their own #macitbetter content. To further inspire our audience, film seeded via social media showed consumers how to #macitbetter with the Big Mac Special Sauce. McDonald’s then took to the streets over 3 weeks with Sauce Bombing Squads, and a tweet powered vending machine distributing a total of 35,000 free Special Sauce tubs near popular eateries in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane where people might want to #macitbetter.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

Big Mac was iconic throughout the 80s, children of the 90s, but millennials haven’t developed the same relationship. Mainly, because the Big Mac hasn’t been partaking in modern pop-culture. To make Big Mac relevant to millenials we needed to be where they were – social, mobile, out in the real world –we had to give them control. Handing the Special Sauce over to #macitbetter, we invited people to respond creatively, to play with the Big Mac, and allowed the brand to become a part of their social content culture. This gesture and shift in power, drove re-evaluation of the brand, and them back to McDonald’s.

Results

Within the first 24 hours we’d got not only our millennial audience, but also Australia and the globe, talking about our Special Sauce and the Big Mac again. There were +3.8billion PR impressions and news of the eBay auction trended (twice on consecutive nights!) on Facebook. Critically, over 1500 unique public UGC #macitbetter uploads were created and publicly shared via social media reaching 200% of our social audience target – a total of 6million Facebook reach. Our #macitbetter activity also doubled positive sentiment amongst our audience (week prior to launch at 8% to 17% in first week of campaign), and the brand experienced improvements in YoY brand health scores of ‘Brand for me’ and Band I love’ during the campaign period. Most impressively, McDonald’s recorded the most Big Mac sales ever in Australia versus any other 4 week period, and we also drove 4.5 million more people into restaurant than the same time last year.