Title	THE FAST NEWS
Brand	MCDONALD'S DENMARK
Product/Service	MCDONALD'S
Category	B12. Use of Social Platforms
Entrant	NORD DDB Copenhagen, DENMARK
Idea Creation	NORD DDB Copenhagen, DENMARK
Media Placement	OMD DENMARK Copenhagen, DENMARK
Production	NORD DDB Copenhagen, DENMARK

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… We released clickbait posts one-by-one. When clicking the posts, the viewer was exposed to the truth behind the myth, explained with at short copy and a single image – all delivered with humour and charm. 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.

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%

This campaign made it possible for McDonald’s to turn the most harming stories about the brand into a trust building activity through a strong insight, engaging creative along with a timely orchestrated media strategy and the right choice of media platform. McDonald’s started a dialogue with consumers that otherwise would not engage with the brand. The high level of engagement from the consumers helped McDonald’s spread the true stories behind the myths about their food, organization and employee working conditions. Within 2,5 weeks we managed to reach and engage enough Danes to increase the trust in the brand by 21%.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

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. This combined with the fact that 78% of the population in the Nordics access Facebook via their smartphone, it was vital to make the campaign mobile to succeed (sources: https://www.emarketer.com and http://digitalkommunikation.net). 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.