THE FAST NEWS

TitleTHE FAST NEWS
BrandMCDONALD'S DENMARK
Product/ServiceMCDONALD'S
Category E07. Content Placement
Entrant NORD DDB Copenhagen, DENMARK
Idea Creation NORD DDB Copenhagen, DENMARK
Media Placement OMD DENMARK Copenhagen, DENMARK
Production NORD DDB Copenhagen, DENMARK
Credits
Name Company Position
Kasper Dohlmann DDB Copenhagen Art Director
Thomas Fabricius DDB Copenhagen Creative Director
Eskil Busck DDB Copenhagen Digital Director
Pernille Ryder DDB Copenhagen Account Director
Pernille Zillmer DDB Copenhagen Strategic Planner
Nynne Seifert DDB Copenhagen Account Manager
Fredrik Twede DDB Copenhagen Digital Designer
Kenan Christensen DDB Copenhagen (previously) Front-end Developer
Dennis Jul DDB Copenhagen Digital Producer
Anders Wik DDB Copenhagen CEO
Frederik Brask OMD Denmark Digital Planner
Stefanie Moth OMD Denmark Digital Director
Heidi Bank Sørensen OMD Denmark Media Director
Mette Rosenberg OMD Denmark Account Director

The Campaign

The creative idea is about using the strength of clicks, comments and shares from clickbait stories about McDonald’s on Facebook; we needed to fight fire with fire! We created ‘The Fast News’. A news outlet on Facebook, which sole purpose was to spread even more clickbait stories about McDonald’s. Or at least that was what it looked like… Based on the most talked-about fake news stories, we created clickbait posts and released them one by one. When clicking the posts, the viewer was exposed to the truth behind the myth, explained with a short copy and a single image – all delivered with humour and charm. This is how we got the Danes to read and comment on the truth behind the myths about McDonald’s. Once ‘clickbaited’, the Danes started sharing the stories and tricking their friends into reading the boring truth about McDonald’s Denmark.

Creative Execution

We created 14 Facebook posts and launched them one-by-one from ‘The Fast News’ Facebook page. Each post had a carefully crafted headline without any false statements about McDonald’s, but at the same time it prompted the myth that we wished to attack. When clicking a post, you would open an article on ‘The Fast News’ website. On the website, you could read and share more clickbait stories thus spreading the campaign. To avoid a spam effect, we applied a reach and frequency strategy to ensure that we reached as many as possible within our target audience, but at the same time made sure that people only saw the same post once but at least three different posts. To follow up on Facebook users who did not click the posts, we launched clickbait videos that revealed the truth behind the myth only a few seconds after the clickbait headline was shown.

Facebook posts -The campaign generated 7.9 million impressions, with a reach of 1.7 million users. A target group of 2.2 million users equals a reach of 78% of the target group (and we are just 3.5m Danish users on Facebook) -301,718 link clicks from 255,616 unique users = 15% of the users went to the ‘The Fast News’ website – that is a unique CTR of 15% -The campaign reached an impressive 900,000 post engagements Video posts -The video posts were targeted at the same users, but excluding visitors to ‘The Fast News’ site. The video posts generated 195,032 video views Website -280,000 users visited the website, reading an average of four stories each and spending a total of 4,500 hours with the boring truth about McDonald’s Denmark Trust score -And most importantly of all, the trust score increased by 21% in just two weeks – from 25% to 39%

It was critical to attack the most common and damaging myths, so via consumer research and mapping of the ‘real’ clickbait stories, we found the topics that concerned the Danes the most, and that would have the greatest effect on their trust in the brand. We used Facebook as a platform for the campaign since the ‘real’ clickbait stories are spread here and with 73,1% of all Danes on Facebook we could get the message across. We wanted to reach the people that would read the ‘real’ clickbait stories, but decided not to target haters, since they rarely change their minds. True fans already love the brand, so we focused on people who feel indifferently about the brand. Besides targeting ‘the indifferent ones’*, we also built a ‘clickbait segment’ based on those who often engage with clickbait stories. *Facebook population deducted McDonald’s fan base of both lovers and haters.