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McDonalds Australia Leveraged Facebook Marketing To Get 2.3 Million Australian Reach

Case study of times now used social media marketing

Mcdonalds-australiaAbout McDonald’s

The story of McDonald’s was started by Maurice & Richard McDonald in 1940 as a barbecue restaurant in the United States. In 1948 the Mcdonald’s recognized the potential and reworked their business model into a hamburger restaurant using the principles of production line. In 1955 Ray Kroc a businessman entered into a partnership with McDonalds as a franchise agent, he was quick to identify the opportunity and subsequently bought the restaurant chain from the McDonald’s and further engineered its worldwide growth. Since then, McDonald’s has seen a tremendous growth. It is has now become the biggest chain of fast food restaurants selling hamburgers in around 119 countries, serving 68 million plus people on daily basis through it’s 35,000 outlets.

A McDonald’s outlet is managed by either an affiliate, the corporation or a franchisee. The revenues of McDonald’s Corporation are driven from the royalties, rents and commission provided by the franchisees, and last but not the least, sales through the company-operated restaurants. The company clocked annual revenues to the tunes of $27.5 billion with profits of $5.5 billion In 2012. According to BBC’s 2012 report, McDonald’s has become second largest private employer in the world just behind Walmart with around 1.9 million employees, out of which about 1.5 million of work for franchises. McDonald’s mainly sells hamburgers, chicken, french fries, cheeseburgers, breakfast items, milkshakes, soft drinks, and desserts. With the ever changing consumer tastes, the company has broaden its menu and now it include salads, wraps, smoothies, seasoned fries, fruits and fish.

Introduction

250140_logoMcDonald has been quite successful in most of the countries where it runs it’s operations. It best almost all of it’s competition hands down thanks to its audience/customer engagement strategies. McDonald has pretty strong presence in Australia, it boasts off around 920 plus outlets across the country and it actively participates in sponsoring sporting events like the FIFA World Cup 2014. It tries to bring it’s brand promise “I’m Lovin’ It” to life with the help of it’s soccer-related content.

McDonald’s Australia was one of the first brand to try out Facebook’s new feature of Premium Video Ads during the FIFA World Cup 2014. McDonald’s was able drive more than 1 million video plays in around 24 hours.

Business Objective of McDonald’s

The main business objective of McDonald’s was brand association which will lead to more engagement more user interest and subsequently convert into higher sales figure for the company.Maccas-world-cup-burger

McDonald’s goal was to increase score of it’s brand and at the same time also strengthen the brand association between the FIFA World Cup 2014 and itself. For achieving this, it inspired the Australians to watch videos of it’s campaign as soccer crazy fans started to get ready to watch the ultimate show of soccer on the planet.

Strategy/Approach adopted by McDonald’s

  • Focusing on video plays

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T7zyezBkuY

McDonald’s strategically designed the video content for different digital platforms and ran Facebook’s latest feature “Premium Video Ads” and in doing so it become the first brand in Australia to try out the product.
The brand ad showcased a 15-second clip that stirred excitement at the national level and spring-boarded the new premium video ads on the very first day of the sporting event. Since the premium video ads enables the advertisers to reach a target set of audience for a limited duration of time and are created in a manner to be hugely engaging, this helped McDonald’s to get its digital campaign off to a robust start.

Results achieved by McDonald’s

Fbvideo_4b07cdc0-f28d-11e3-aa23005056a302e6McDonald was able to leverage on the buzz and the public frenzy generated around the FIFA World Cup 2014 with the help of wide array of video promotion products offered by Facebook. The 15-second video in particular proved to be quite a performer on Facebook mobile. The Facebook campaign proved to be a great success for McDonald’s and following were the results that were delivered:

  • About 1,165,736 video plays
  • 2.3 million plus reach of audience
  • Average video play – 12 seconds (Video duration – 15 seconds )
  • Overall 3-point jump in the brand scores especially among 34–49 year age group (Nielsen Brand Effect)
    Mobile were the highest grosser as almost 70% of the total impressions were on hand-held mobile devices.

Learnings

Following are the learnings from this case study:

  • McDonald was able to capitalize on the age-old fact that image attracts and engages a user more as compared to a simple text. An audio visual ad is more attractive and is able to drive home the brand’s message in a crisp, entertaining and effective manner. No doubt video advertisement campaigns on Facebook are little-bit on the higher side in terms of bid value but it is a quick way to reach your message to your target audience in a short and effective manner.
  • Mcdonalds-fries-worldcup2014 (1)With ever increasing number of smart phone users, it is essential for the brands to devise their marketing campaigns in a manner where they are able to reach their audience who are connected to the digital world through their mobile devices. This case study is a great example of increased importance of mobile devices in reaching your target audience as for McDonald’s almost 70% of the total impressions served were on mobile devices.

Image Credits: ctcmatn, adnews, news.com.au, huffingtonpost, blog.twmg, marketwierd,McDonald’s Coorporation YouTube channel.

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