McDonald's Gets Youths to Build Big Macs by Shaking Their Phones

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McDonald's has partnered with Sina Weibo using a fairly new QR code technology to get Chinese youths to build a Big Mac Tower with their mobile and computer screens.

The fast food chain wanted young working adults between 20 to 29 years old living in China's tier one and two cities to love the Big Mac and associate the burger with a "macho" personality.

To activate the digital campaign, DDB Group Shanghai worked with Sina Weibo, China's popular social platform, to create a mini-site for consumers to pay tribute to their fathers (an insight the agency said represented the macho figure among its target audience).

Creative ad banners were served on Sina China's web portal to drive readers to click and participate in the campaign.

http://all.vic.sina.com.cn/bigmac/

Once users visit Big Mac's campaign site via their computers, they could start the game using their smartphones to scan the QR code.

Then the phone would be directed to the mobile site where participants have to shake their phones to choose from a selection of seven witty phrases to describe their father's macho personalities.

Participants could also choose to create their own descriptions to add to their personalized Big Macs.

Once they have selected the phrase it would sync directly with the different layers of the burger on their computer screens.

Consumers were encouraged to share the completed Big Macs to their social networks on Weibo with an incentive that they would stand a chance to win coupons and enjoy the Big Mac at half price.

Within three weeks, the agency said it had to produce and fix bugs to ensure that the consumer journey for synchronizing mobile and computer interaction was smooth.

The month-long campaign rolled out in late February. The results - More than 76,400 shares on Weibo with average bounce rate at 3 percent compared to normal benchmark at 40 percent.

Lawrence Chiew, account director at DDB China, says the new digital interaction (between mobile and PC) was popular with their target audience and that the large user base on Sina Weibo is a good platform to build buzz.