Agency: OMD UK
Category: Best display campaign
Challenge
Back in the early 2000s, the health issues raised in the film ‘Supersize Me’ dominated the headlines for McDonald’s. While the brand had worked on rebuilding trust with consumers since then, its brand trust scores remained stagnant. McDonald’s food still had a reputation for being of lower quality than competitors’ offerings. McDonald’s had to reverse stubbornly held beliefs and supercharge growth.
Approach
McDonald’s burgers are 100% quality British and Irish beef – but this wasn’t the perception. To combat this, the brand decided to go back to 90s media and culture to contextualise the public’s outdated views of McDonald’s food quality. As a news brand that moved from broadsheet to tabloid print format in the mid-2000s, The Times was a perfect partner. What’s more, those who most trusted the news brand’s journalism were a key target for McDonald’s.
In a media-first, The Times resurrected its old-school broadsheet format. Using an innovative fold-out broadsheet print approach and headlines from the archives, McDonald’s was able to demonstrate their long-standing commitment to quality ingredients that began when British society looked very different. Further columns in the Culture magazine reprinted dispatches from the past, encouraging readers to reminisce about Britpop and VHS or DVD.
Results
The six-week campaign enabled McDonald’s to hit their targets. Trust reached an all-time high, with The Times partnership shown to be a key driver of these results by independent research.
Judges view
This campaign delivered on reinforcing McDonald’s long history of free-range and British ingredients and ultimately delivered on its objectives of shifting trust metrics.
Rebecca Smithson, head of activation, Havas Media Network
