FOREST OF FRIES

TitleFOREST OF FRIES
BrandMCDONALD'S
Product/ServicePROMISE OF QUALITIY
Category A04. Retail, e-Commerce, Restaurants & Fast Food Chains
Entrant THJNK Hamburg, GERMANY
Idea Creation THJNK Hamburg, GERMANY
Idea Creation 2 LEO BURNETT FRANKFURT, GERMANY
Production E+P FILMS Munich, GERMANY
Credits
Name Company Position
Armin Jochum, Andreas Pauli LTT CCO
Jörg Hoffmann, Alexander Müsgens, Max Biedermann LTT Executive Creative Director
Dimitrios Arampatzioglou, Daniel Gassner LTT Creative Director
Daniel Machauer LTT Art Director
Claudio Keleminic, Günther Marschall LTT Copywriter
Nils Endres, Julia Bendels, Marie-Kristin Schlüter LTT Account Manager
Peter Johannes, Bastian Menzinger, Kathrin Lenzer SALT WORKS GmbH Account Manager
Christiane Wenhart, Anna-Maria Gargiulo LTT Strategic Planner
Julia Diehl, Christian Hibbeler LTT Agency Producer
Kaspar Kaven - DOP Lighting Cameraman
Matthias Thönnissen e+p Films GmbH Director, Editor
Klaus Lesoine Exit-Studios GmbH Sound Engineer

The Campaign

The McDonald’s Deutschland products meet the highest quality standards. There’s no doubt that the quality is of the very best. The problem is that people are more likely to believe rumors, distorted facts and myths about McDonald’s that circulate on the Web than the truth. Wild stories are always more appealing than reality. So how do you get a young, digitally savvy target group to engage with the topic of “McDonald’s and quality” at all?"

Execution

"Our campaign was launched simultaneously in cinemas, OoH and online. While in cinemas the commercial was flanked by a promotion, we linked it online directly to our hub where visitors learned the truth about McDonald’s. There, people were able to see for themselves where the potatoes for McDonald’s delicious fries actually come from. For the different social media activities, we developed customized formats for each individual channel. We created a dedicated start screen with subtitles for Facebook and chose the 1:1 format supporting mobile devices. An extra-long version was available for viewing on YouTube. Bloggers such as Schlecky Silberstein covered our commercial and little boomerangs and snippets linked users directly with our hub."

Our Fries Forest myth commercial has been viewed online over 13 million times, including more than 5.6 million views on Facebook alone. We achieved a total of over 84 million ad impressions on the Internet. Since our commercial was linked to the quality hub on all social media channels, the number of visitors to the hub rose by over 900%. That meant we not only succeeded in enhancing people’s perception of McDonald’s quality in one fell swoop, but also scored a significant image gain into the bargain.

The Situation

McDonald’s has excellent quality products. But no one is really interested in that. Yet at the same time, no one wants to watch boring commercials about where the products come from or how carefully cows and chickens are reared. If then suddenly a commercial pops up online showing a supposedly genuine rumor about McDonald’s, it sets off a media earthquake that all of a sudden everyone is interested in. That’s 85 million ad impressions, to be precise.

The Strategy

The aim was to respond to myths about McDonald’s without moralizing and, in that way, to spark interest in McDonald’s product quality and the new McDonald’s quality hub. We developed the campaign “The truth about McDonald’s,” which broached such myths and employed all channels to do so: OoH, print, promotion, cinema, in-store and online.The focus of the campaign was on the “Fries Forest” documentary video relating to one of the most common myths about McDonald’s: “McDonald’s fries are made of wood and sawdust.”