Insight
McDonald’s has always been a leader in the Instant Eating Out (IEO) category but in Hong Kong, Chinese New Year (CNY) is always a difficult period for business.
During this festive season, Hong Kongers hanker for ‘prosperous’ foods from conventional Chinese cuisine to bring themselves luck in the year ahead, making it incredibly hard for McDonald’s to stay on their consideration list.
OMD Hong Kong's challenge was to grow McDonald’s store visits by making the Western international brand and its new range of ‘Prosperity Burgers’ relevant at CNY.
Strategy
Chinese New Year is a special time for family togetherness and for blessings to be shared. When it comes to expressing ‘feelings’, this is the only time that people can really just be open and share with others their most heartfelt wishes.
The agency identified ‘heartfelt CNY blessings’ as McDonald’s key opportunity to associate the international brand with the local festive ritual to connect with HK people on a more personal level.
Unlike most brands which just plastered corporate CNY greeting messages to the whole of HK, OMD Hong Kong tried to dig into people’s real feelings at this time of the year to resonate with HK people to ‘greet’ and connect deeper with each other.
Hence, McDonald’s creatively revolutionised heartfelt blessings and created “McGreeting” – an Augmented Reality-enabled mobile app to celebrate Chinese New Year with everyone that mattered - the whole of Hong Kong.
Execution
Through the “McGreeting” mobile app, HK people could personalise their CNY blessings for their families and friends. With just a simple “shake” mechanic, everyone in HK passed on their personalised heartfelt CNY greetings.
Watching Chinese celebration TV programmes becomes a key family gathering activity during CNY, so the agency bridged mobile with TV to create an immersive experience of sharing blessings with the whole of Hong Kong.
McDonald's went inside the house of 7 million HK people, virtually, through a special TVC enabled with Augmented Reality on mobile. Over the holiday, people pointed at the TV screens and witnessed McDonald’s ambassadors and Hong Kong’s most loved comedians “Soft Hard” ‘jumped’ straight out of the screen, giving them a CNY blessing right in their own home.
Exploiting the Augmented Reality technology as a revenue generator, people could even use the app by scanning the packaging of McDonald’s’ “prosperity burgers” where “Soft Hard” would appear on their mobile screen and give them a lucky Red Packet containing e-coupons.
Results
“McGreeting” AR mobile app bridged the gap between the real and the virtual world and McDonald's was able to celebrate Chinese New Year with everyone that mattered - the whole of Hong Kong.
In less than a month, the app received incredible engagement results:
•More than 1.2 million uses of the app from more than 80,000 downloads
•Interaction rate for AR TVC reached over 170,000 in the first day alone
•Generated more than 640,000 unique greetings
This interactive campaign had also driven strong business results:
•Prosperity Burgers were sold out in just 2 weeks.
•Exceeded Prosperity Burgers Sales Target by 72%.
•Highest-ever number of customers visiting McDonald’s during Chinese New Year, doubling the brand's target.
On top of the success in business and digital engagement metrics, OMD Hong Kong was able to uplift McDonald’s key brand measures:
•‘Favourite Instant Eating Out restaurant’ - +21% (reflected a growth in true loyalists)
•Food image scores +20%.