The Challenge
Gamers are hard to reach with regular ads. They rarely use traditional media, block all ads possible and generally find advertisers’ communication irrelevant and only allow brands who understand and respect them into their “circle of trust”.
However, we knew there was a perfect match between McDonald's and the gaming community, so we just needed to find a way to get the gamers attention and convince them that McDonald's takes them seriously.
The Idea
We decided to talk to the gamers using their own language and made the e-sports menu: McDonald’s products named after the equivalent in gaming lingo.
Full Buy, Eco Round, Utility, NOOB, Freeze Time, Fragsteal, GL HF... You don’t get it? Well, CS:GO Gamers do!
Cheeseburger = "ECO ROUND": means economic round in CS:GO, where teams save money for future rounds - perfect fit for the cheeseburger coinoffer.
Big Mac meal = "FULL BUY", where teams stack up on equipment, hence the big McD meal.
Happy Meal = "NOOB": derived from “newbie” meaning a less experienced gamer.
On the weekend of the biggest live e-sports event of the year - Blast Premier - we put up posters at the metro stop where gamers got off to go to the event.
We followed this with SoMe posts and in-game ads, and that was it. A small campaign with some big results.
The Results
The Gamers got it, they shared it - and were Lovin’ It! The media caught up and shared it too, and the overall results were outstanding:
More than 100,000,000 people were reached through media across 18 countries.
On top of this, a picture of the OOH posters was the most upvoted post on Reddit in the past year and suddenly McD was on everybody’s lips across the CS:GO community - GL HF!