The Campaign

Smartly link 3.14 ? ? = pie, instead of following common White Valentine Day on Mar 14th, redefine 3.14 as Pie Day, a new social festival to celebrate with pie.

Creative Execution

Firstly, leverage trendy topic “Gravitational Wave” at the time, feed @The Onion China Daily true and false topic of “?(Pie) Day wave”, saying the date 3.14 will cause gravitational wave form a perfect circle radiation, which named “Pie day wave”, a best chance to evolve intelligence. And dessert, simple as fruit pie, can be a good activator. Catch amounts of audience’s attention on social media. Taking over the hotness, McDonald's came on the scene, “Pie Day Wave” ready to go! Audience were transferred to McDonald's official WeChat or QQ account, to check the unknown Pie Planet and identify their Pie-beings evolution. Finally, invite Pie-beings go to McDonald's restaurant, enjoy 3Yuan Pie Day discount, celebrate with tasty.

The campaign reached 6,000,000+ awareness for the Pie Day topic, earned more than 360,000 new followers in McDonald's QQ and Wechat account, successfully helped to boost almost 2 million pie sales within remarkable 4-day period, and half of the sales number were directly contributed by this campaign effectiveness.

The target audience is 14-30 year-old young people, who perform actively on social media, curious for fresh information, open to engage with new things, love to follow even pay for social trendy things, and share/discuss with others. The campaign launched on Chinese biggest 3social platforms firstly - Weibo, WeChat and QQ. Leverage the trend topic “Gravitational Wave” on that time, create a true and false topic of “?(Pie) Day wave”, released on Weibo as tease first to effectively approach mass audience’s attention, then trans to Wechat and QQ to continue one-on-one engagement, finally drive to offline restaurant for purchase. Start from creating awareness, end with enhancing sales.