Marketing

McDonald’s #10yearchallenge is a lesson in capitalising on viral social media trends


Unless one has been hibernating, it is difficult to miss the #10yearchallenge doing the rounds of social media. Quick to tap into any viral trend on social media, brands have also latched on to the popularity of #10yearchallenge. 

Now, taking the #10yearchallenge many notches higher, McDonald’s has slashed its menu prices to what they were 10 years back, for 10 days starting January 23, 2019, exclusively on its recently launched ‘McDonald’s’ app. McDonald’s lovers can now grab their house favourites at 2009 prices by simply showing the offer within the app to the counter crew while placing the order, at any McDonald’s restaurant across West and South India. 

Launched earlier in January this year, the McDonald’s app allows consumers to customise their preferences. In addition to availing of attractive customised offers that can be redeemed at the restaurant, customers can also share their feedback and find their nearest McDonald’s restaurant on this app. 

Speaking on this unique initiative, Akshay Jatia, General Manger – Brand Extensions, Hardcastle Restaurants Pvt Ltd, said, “As the 10-year challenge gained momentum, we at McDonald’s wanted to do something beyond just posting a picture or putting a post out on the social media. Over the years, we have delivered unparalleled value to our customers. Through our own 10-year challenge, we wanted to provide our customers a unique value proposition and reinforce that while we have evolved over the last 10 years, we have not changed – we still continue to deliver unparalleled value.” 

Speaking further on the ‘McDonald’s’ app launch, he added, “We are committed to enhancing our digital capabilities and leveraging technology to deliver enhanced value and convenience to our customers. The new McDonald’s app, that lets our customers avail of a slew of attractive in-store offers at their fingertips, is a step in this direction.” 

In an interaction with Adgully, Akshay Jatia elaborates on this new initiative, successfully capitalising on current trends, and more. 

Could you tell us about the genesis of McDonald’s #10yearchallenge campaign?
We launched this campaign from a local point of view. McDonald’s has always been very vibrant and young. As a young brand, we are very excited to launch a campaign on the back of the 10-year challenge. For the 10-year challenge, most brands were putting up posts on social media to show their progression, but at McDonald’s we believe that as a brand we’ve always believed to be the same, whether it was in 2009 or now is 2019. We offer unparalleled value to our customers and that hasn’t changed in all these years. What has changed is that we have evolved as a brand, but our value proposition hasn’t changed. That’s how the idea came about to lower our prices to 2009 prices for 10 days. 

As a brand, we always capitalise on events that relate to our target groups as well as trends that relate to them, be it through our Instagram content, Insta promotions or even when we do above the line. The application offers a new medium through which we can interact with our users. It gives us an avenue to constantly engage with them with content that is relevant for them. 

We have always pushed campaign like this on digital platforms once we began using these platforms. Our TG always remains the same, as a young vibrant brand, we relate to a lot of the millennials and the older generation who have been visiting McDonald’s for the last 25 years. Digital is where we see a huge traction coming from our incumbent TG so we always try to stay relevant with events like the 10-year challenge that we feel our relevant for our consumers. 

The app was coincidentally launched at the beginning of the year 2019. There was no real plan to launch it along with the challenge, however, the application provides many relevant offers and promotions. If you browse through our app, we have an entire section of offers and promotions that are based on data like target group, consumer preferences, and accordingly provide the relevant offer information. The application is an all in one application to provide value to our users. One of the key features of the app and the 10-year challenge are offers that users are able to redeem at the restaurant. The 10-year challenge is a great promotional opportunity and as a brand we felt that it was a good fit to launch our own 10-year challenge. 

Who is your digital partner for promoting the campaign?
We work with the DDB Group. 

What touch points on digital are you promoting the campaign?
We will promote the campaign on all digital platforms where we have the reach and are the most relevant for users. You will see our content on Facebook, Google, Instagram; thus, it is available across all digital and social platforms. 

How has the response been to the MsDonald’s app?
The application was launched at the beginning of January 2019. The response has been very promising and consumers have received the application very well in terms of early numbers. We have already crossed over 150,000 downloads and our target is to overshoot over 5 million downloads by the end of the year.

With home delivery on the rise, why are the #10yearchallenge offers available only in-store?
As a brand we think this is a very exciting proposition for users. It provides them value on engaging content. Apart from that, we integrated our McDelivery platform into the application to provide our users a free experience. Thus, within the application users can avail discounts and offers, view engaging content and interact with the McDelivery platform like they did before. The application combines all these features to provide users an all in one experience when they interact with McDonald’s. 

The USP of the app is that you get customised offers based on your behaviour and experience in the restaurant. 

The application that we have launched has offers and promotions available for in store customers. The registration process for that is new because it is a new platform. Our McDelivery users will be able to order from the application from a McDelivery section that you can log into separately.

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