WHY IS THIS WORK RELEVANT?
We made McDonald’s hamburgers and Coca-Cola soft drinks appear live on Twitch for an entire day without paying Twitch anything. We brought our logos and packaging to the forefront, got thousands to consume our product on air, thousands of live mentions, and millions of real-time interactions. We increased McDelivery orders by 30%, we became trending in Mexico, and we got more than 600,000 gamers to interact live with the brand, that’s ten full soccer stadiums. Everything, absolutely everything, in exchange for a small budget of six thousand dollars in bits.
BACKGROUND
Situation:
Being part of the gamer world is an increasingly pressing need for McDonald’s Mexico, a market where 57.4%* of residents consider themselves gamers.
Brief:
The client wanted to take ownership of gamer day over many gamer-related brands with much larger budgets.
Objectives:
Connect the brand to the world of gamers.
Create a brand experience on a shoestring budget.
Increase app downloads.
Get more orders through McDelivery.
*Forbes
IDEA
As gamers play live on Twitch, their fans support them financially through chat by giving them Bits, the platform official currency. Each Bit is equal to 0.1 USD, which is deposited into gamers bank accounts. Bits are not coins you can spend in-game but the cash you can spend in real life.
That’s why McDonald’s Mexico, instead of buying the three banners offered by Twitch for the budget it had for Gamer Day, decided to use the money to buy bits and hack the platform.
As if we were another fan, we bought 6,000 USD worth of bits and joined the chats of gamers with more followers on Twitch to offer them bits in exchange for “bites” of McDonald’s hamburgers live.
STRATEGY
Being part of the gamer world is an increasingly urgent need for McDonald’s Mexico, a market where 57.4% of residents consider themselves gamers. And if we wanted to enter the world of gamers, we naturally had to enter Twitch.
To do this in the most organic way possible, we set out to become just another gamer, understanding the dynamics of the network and respecting the natural behavior of gamers and fans. So, our strategy was not to please gamers but to become one of them.
EXECUTION
• We created an account for McDonald’s on Twitch.
• We bought $6,000 worth of bits on the platform.
• We joined the chats of the streamers with the most followers in Mexico.
• We offered them bits in exchange for “bites” for hamburger live.
• We rewarded millions of fans live.
• We extended the promotion for three more days to respond to all the gamers who had joined us.
RESULTS
+30% over the average daily sales.
+23% over the average daily orders.
Over 600,000 fans live.
+ 1.5 M interactions in 9 hours.
1.1 M bits delivered in real-time.
A trending topic in Mexico above the #DíaDelGamer.
+1.5 M impressions in 9 hours.
100% positive sentiment.