Summary

Approach: Indian Youth - Opinionated, not Action-Oriented: In the 2014 elections, 1 out of 3 urban Indians didn’t exercise their right to choose. Social media is always buzzing with youth blaming the system. Yet a majority of the youth treat the day of elections like any other public holiday. And often spend it at their favourite hangouts like McDonald's, instead of going to cast their vote. In the 2019 elections, we wanted to make a difference. Over 70% of our customers are between 18 and 35 years old. So on election day, we decided to serve them a realisation of what happens when you give up your right to choose. Creative Execution On the first day of the election, in Hyderabad, we served non-voting customers a different order instead of giving them what they paid for. Along with a message: When you don’t vote, you lose your right to choose. And urged them to go cast their vote. We captured their reactions and turned it into an awareness film on digital, and used it to talk to the rest of India. We put out real-time Instagram and FB posts that brought alive the voter turnout for each phase, by turning our iconic food products into stats. Voters got an opportunity to appear on our feed and Menuboards by sharing their pictures with inked finger on social media. Our self-ordering machine in the store showed the consumers how easy it is to vote. McDonald’s app & Instore posters made sure our that users can access the address of polling booth while parallelly churning out special offers for the voters. Results: Scores for ‘Overall good opinion’ for McDonald's went from 34 in March to 37 in September. ‘Trustworthy’ scores went up from 33 to 35. While the perception of being a ‘family brand’ rose by a massive 5 points from 30 in March to 35 in September. The campaign garnered earned media worth Rs. 3,51,78,500 - 88X return on our total media investment of 4 lakhs We were the most shared election video on Whatsapp - A potent medium that is affecting voter opinions in India more than other media put together. (Source: Business Insider) Award-winning Padme Shree journalist Sucheta Dalal applauded our efforts and even retweeted it. Internationally, it was picked up by the Drum and many others, including the Brazilian Creative club - Club D Criacao. Our guest count increased by almost 17% in the regions that went into polling. We managed to garner 8,16,50,000 impressions with a total reach of 5,98,00,000 The awareness film went on to become the most successful video in the history of McDonald’s India.