McDonald's: Our Food. Your Questions. [video]

Credits & Description:

Type of entry: Use of Promo & Activation
Category: Best use of Social Media Marketing in a Promotional Campaign
Advertiser: McDONALD'S CANADA
Product/Service: McDONALD'S
Agency: TRIBAL DDB TORONTO, CANADA
Account Coordinator: Melanie Chiriboga-Gomez (Tribal DDB Toronto)
Account Director: Miles Savage (Tribal DDB Toronto)
Group Account Director: Kevin Jones (Tribal DDB Toronto)
Managing Director: Andrew Mccartney (Tribal DDB Toronto)
Executive Producer: Neem Ba Ha (Tribal DDB Toronto)
Art Director: Amy French (Tribal DDB Toronto)
Art Director: Kara Wark (Tribal DDB Toronto)
Art Director: Benson Ngo (Tribal DDB Toronto)
Copywriter: Sanya Grujicic (Tribal DDB Toronto)
Copywriter: Tiffany Chung (Tribal DDB Toronto)
Copywriter: Ryan Lawrence (Tribal DDB Toronto)
Lead Designer: Peter Borell (Tribal DDB Toronto)
Senior Art Director: Derek Blais (Tribal DDB Toronto)
Senior Copywriter: Ian Mackenzie (Tribal DDB Toronto)
Technology Director: Joe Dee (Tribal DDB Toronto)
Strategy: Jason Chaney (Tribal DDB Toronto)
Creative Director: Louis-Philippe Tremblay (Tribal DDB Toronto)
Describe the brief from the client
McDonald’s has long been confident in the quality of its food, practices and procedures.
Consistently low food quality scores and social listening revealed that consumers were not so confident. The brief was too dramatically change consumer perception about McDonald's food. Instead of targeting the ‘Lovers’ – as McDonald’s had tended to do – we targeted the ‘Fence-sitters’, those who actively question the quality and nutritional value of their food. We knew these consumers had questions about McDonald’s food. We had answers. Good ones. The only way people will start listening to us is if we started by listening to them.
Promotion Development
Solution: Radical transparency
We created a social activation platform that gave consumers unfettered and unfiltered access to the McDonald’s brand. 'Our Food. Your Questions' invited consumers to ask McDonald’s any question they had about the food. No question was too tough or raw for McDonald’s to answer. The most optimistic projections called for 5,000 consumer questions and 500,000 website visits. Instead of hiding the toughest, most negative questions, we did the opposite and put the full weight of McDonald’s media behind them. Real consumer questions were brought to life across paid channels to amplify this radical transparency platform.
Results
Results: Fortune favors the brave
The old adage plays true for McDonald’s. Having one of the world’s biggest and most closed brands open its door was disruptive and consumers paid attention. Consumer response was outstanding with over 20,000 questions received and answered and over 2 million website visits with an average time spent of 4 minutes and 3 seconds reading over 7 million questions. In addition, 132 million media impressions and 2.3 billion social impressions helped increase brand perception scores by 46% in the critical metric 'company I trust'.
Relevancy to Product/Service
We utilized consumer Questions about McDonald’s Food as the creative execution – by utilizing real consumer’s Facebook profile or Twitter handle, and their Question Text, as the core creative element on the website, in Social Media, online ads, OOH and on Television. Each and every post stopped people in their tracks due to its unique personal, engaging nature and ability to address widespread myths about McDonald’s food. The questions were provocative yet brand appropriate as they were addressing a brand trust issue head on.