Creative Spotlight: McDonald's Unbranded Menu
One of the biggest challenges with advertising in gaming culture, is that there are so many diverse and different sub-cultures. But what if you came up with an idea that could connect with them all? That is the true genius of the McDonald's Unbranded Menu, by Leo Burnett Manila.
One of the biggest challenges with advertising in gaming culture, is that there are so many diverse and different sub-cultures. But what if you came up with an idea that could connect with them all? That is the true genius of the McDonald's Unbranded Menu, by Leo Burnett Manila. And why it's the feature of this week's Creative Spotlight.
The idea starts with a really simple insight. There is food in almost every game, and a lot of it look suspiciously like McDonald's.
So McDonald's was on a mission, to find every food in every game that looked like McD's. The great part? They weren't on this mission alone. Gamers would LOVE to help. And they did. From GTA, to Roblox, to Cyberpunk 2077, to Final Fantasy, and even to arcade games, gamers flooded social media with virtual food pics at #ThisIsMcDonalds.
The case study from Leo Burnett Manila, shown below, does a good job of telling the campaign story - and you can see why it was successful.
If McDonald's had come out and owned the campaign - I feel like it would have still done well. But what really made it go from advertising campaign to cultural phenomenon is that they used a great mix of gaming influencers from the region to kick things off. And then McDonald's appeared to jump in and become part of it, supporting the idea rather than starting it.
In the gaming world it is massively important to be seen as a brand that brings value, support, love and authenticity to gamers - and McDonald's approach accomplished that beautifully.
The final step of the campaign was to open up the PMs. As McDonald's social media counts started replying to posts with #ThisIsMcDonalds and offering free food in response via PMs. A simple way to humanize the brand, show there's a real person behind the socials and also offer up value to people who take part.
A lot of the gaming work that wins at advertising shows feels like 'scam' ads done just to win awards, and often you feel there would be very little real impact on the gaming community or gaming culture. But this campaign feels different. It is a nice mix of award-worthy creativity, with social media 'hacking', and authenticity toward gaming culture.