Title	ROAD TO MCDRIVE
Brand	MCDONALDS
Product/Service	MCDRIVE
Category	A03. Travel, Leisure, Retail, Restaurants & Fast Food Chains
Entrant	OMD GERMANY Düsseldorf, GERMANY
Idea Creation	OMD GERMANY Düsseldorf, GERMANY
Idea Creation 2	SCHOLZ & FRIENDS Hamburg, GERMANY
Media Placement	OMD GERMANY Düsseldorf, GERMANY
Production	SCHOLZ & FRIENDS Hamburg, GERMANY
Additional Company	McDONALD'S DEUTSCHLAND München, GERMANY
Additional Company 2	AREASOLUTIONS Hamburg, GERMANY

Name	Company	Position
Stephanie Eger	OMD Germany	Media Planning
Sven Kruber	OMD Germany	Media Strategy
Mareike Bergmann	areasolutions	Media Planning
Soeren Peters	areasolutions	Media Planning
Petra Luecke	areasolutions	Media Buying
Roland Meves	McDonald’s Deutschland LLC	Client - Coordination
Jan Fabian	McDonald’s Deutschland LLC	Client - Coordination
Matthias Spaetgens	Scholz & Friends Hamburg GmbH	Creative Direction
Jens Petter Waernes	Scholz & Friends Hamburg GmbH	Creative Direction
Laura Czyzewski	Scholz & Friends Hamburg GmbH	Art Direction
Melanie Menger	Scholz & Friends Hamburg GmbH	Consulting
Sebastian Gumbel	Scholz & Friends Hamburg GmbH	Consulting
Frank-Michael Schmidt	Scholz & Friends Hamburg GmbH	Strategy
Kerstin Mende	Scholz & Friends Hamburg GmbH	Art Buying
Oliver Handlos	Scholz & Friends Hamburg GmbH	Text

Why is this work relevant for Media?

Within the shortest amount of time we turned over 4100 hand-selected poster sites in the ten biggest German cities into McDrive illusions – aligning creative, media and touchpoint in a way that transformed medium into the message. Key for this execution was selecting only poster sites in the right moment, size and angle. For Germany, this meant negotiating individual placements instead of traditional bulk buying. Mirroring the drive-thru situation, our target group of car drivers was successfully inspired for a detour to the next McDrive. The effect: frequency of McDrive visitors increased by 20% compared to pre-lockdown and non-campaign cities.

Background

November 2020. The country is heavily affected by the corona pandemic. Public life is shut down again: stores, leisure and cultural facilities have to close shop. Gastronomy (and therefore McDonald’s) faces the same fate: buying food or even eating inside the restaurant is not possible anymore. Like during the first lockdown in spring, take-away is the only remaining possibility to serve customers. Thanks to our awareness measures during the spring lockdown most of our customers knew that our drive-thru option, the McDrives, were still open. But with the second lockdown, confusion sets in once more, leading to less visitors at the drive-thru. Therefore, it’s our most important task to remind our customers, that our McDrive is still open and inspire them for a visit.

Describe the creative idea / insights (30% of vote)

November 2020. Due to the renewed lockdown the important public traffic around our stores diminishes, which makes the take-away business suffer severely. But we noticed a shift towards another type of traffic. Our Mobility Index Panel, which measures mobility of population based on different data sources, showed significant rise in car usage and a swelling of street traffic. While the fear of corona is rising again and people wanted to be and feel safe, they were switching: from mobility options with a comparably high risk of catching an infection like public transportation to the safer choice of their own cars. We made use of that fact and put the changing mobility in the centre of our idea. Besides, once in your car – isn’t it just a short detour to the next McDrive?

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

Simply using a huge number of billboards on high frequency streets to highlight the benefits of McDrive (contact-less take-away), enhanced with pictograms or acronyms of hygiene standards is the wrong approach. We have to make McDrive perceptible, the message needs to be clear after just one contact: eye catching, bold and simple. Most Germans know how the typical McDrive order window looks like and vividly remembers how a visit feels: From ordering, via paying, up to the moment when the McDonald’s employee is offering the order from the window. How the scent spreads within the car, how ones mouth waters, how the food is enjoyed. It is exactly this association we need to evoke: as if you are steering your car into McDrive. To convey this, we needed to bring together creative, medium and moment and orchestrate them in just the right way. The medium needed to become the message.

Describe the execution (20% of vote)

To stage the creation as realistically as possible, we needed poster sites that ticked the boxes of a simple checklist: facing car drivers, right hight and angle, situated where cars usually come to a stop… Doesn’t the format of a certain German roadside poster (“city light poster”, short: CLP) match the McDrive window exactly? It does! And if a car stops next to a CLP, isn’t the advertising space at the same height as the McDrive window? Yes, sir! And given the correct design, could the ad create the illusion of stopping your car at the McDrive window? That’s it! Traditionally (and still the only way in Germany) you buy CLPs in bulks. Meaning, poster sites in these bundles can also be in pedestrian zones. A no go for our idea! For our campaign, we individually negotiated 4100 CLP placements, 100% fitting our needs. Never seen before on German streets.

List the results (30% of vote)

Our approach of hand-picked and individually negotiated outdoor poster sites, combined with a creation that let the medium turn into the message increased McDrive traffic as well as trust in McDonald’s. More customers, higher sales: The campaign led to a significant rise in customer frequency of McDrive during campaign period in lockdown. We were able to welcome +20% customers at McDrive during campaign period end of November / beginning of December, compared to end of October before the start of autumn lockdown and compared to non-campaign cities. Top marks for the feeling of safety at McDonald’s: Trust in safety at McDonald’s was increased compared to the pre-lockdown-phase in October: +6% trust in safety of food and provider and +8% trust in implementation of hygiene regulations.