The document outlines a strategy to adapt McDonald's successful 1970s marketing campaign, 'You Deserve a Break Today,' for the digital age using current digital marketing principles. It emphasizes customer engagement through a crowdsourced burger creation campaign targeting young consumers and leverages McDonald's established social media presence in the UK. The strategy includes detailed tactics for promotion, actions to engage customers, and risk management measures to ensure the campaign's success.

1. McDONALD’S
DIGITAL
MAXIMISER
Digital Marketing and Social Media
Yannick Pinkinelli – Hult MIB

2. AGENDA
HISTORY TASK BACKGROUND [S]
SITUATION
ANALYSIS
[OS]
OBJECTIVES
&
STRATEGY
[TAC]
TACTICS
ACTIONS
&
CONTROL

3. 01
HISTORY:
ORIGINAL CAMPAIGN
You deserve a break today -
so get up and get away to McDonald’s
The original campaign of McDonald’s was
launched in 1971 and created by Needham,
Harper & Steers. The purpose of the campaign
was to represent the stores as enjoyable
islands where the customer can “get away”.
After the campaign almost got rejected by
lawyers because of the problematic association
with islands, the agency revised the tagline and
created a song-and-dance act which jingle
excelled over the competitors of that time in
terms of its affects on the consumer.
The campaign was running for four years
including print and TVC and increased sales
while creating an everlasting impression of the
brand name McDonald’s.¹

4. 02
TASK:
MAXIMISE DIGITALLY
The overall goal of the following booklet is to translate McDonald’s successful
campaign from the 1970s into todays digital age by implementing a digital strategy
while maintaining the original tagline and creative idea of the campaign.
According to the theory of acceleration, customers are nowadays confronted with an
increasing pace of the world around them, their lifestyles and their relationships
which leads to a decreasing attention span.²
Because of that, it is crucial for companies to engage with their customers, involve
them and participate in the discussion. Moreover the idea of “having a break” was
never more up to date than today when people are rushing through their life and are
characterized as the “always on customer.”
Therefore the booklet is using the SOSTAC³ approach by analyzing the existing
Social Media appearance of McDonald’s in the UK through a SCQ Analysis
(Situation), defining the benefits of the creative idea (Objectives), summarizing the
fulfillment of the objectives (Strategy), breaking the strategy into details (Tactics),
describing the tactics in detail (Actions) and questioning the approach to test on
success or failure (Control).

5. 03
BACKGROUND:
MCDONALD'S UK
Overall, McDonald’s understands the purpose and opportunities
of Digital Marketing very well. The feeds of the company are
constantly updated in all major Social Media channels (Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest) and McDonald’s is always trying
to engage the customer by creating two-way engagement.
The remaining digital appearance (Homepage and apps) has also
a high reach among customers, which can be seen on the right
hand side, and excels through continuous improvements.⁴
The purpose of this analysis is to show that McDonald’s already
has an outstanding digital appearance in the UK which can be
leveraged to increase customer involvement. As shown in the
numbers, there is no need to increase followers but to engage
them in order to satisfy the needs of todays UK customer:
• To take part in the creation process
• To be more involved in what the brand does
• To feel more listened
>1mio likes⁵
>17k followers⁵
>165k followers⁵
>3k followers⁵
1.569 UK rank⁶
31% Bounce rate⁶
>1mio downloads⁷

6. SITUATION
(STRENGHTS)
COMPLICATION
(WEAKNESSES)
04
[S] SITUATION ANALYSIS:
SCQ
As displayed in the previous slide, McDonald’s has high reach
among customers and an outstanding existing digital strategy. This
is mainly because of the general brand awareness which was built
up through traditional media over the last decades and shows that
the company also has a high visibility offline which can be leveraged
to promote the campaign.
McDonald’s has no need to increase the numbers of followers but to
maintain existing ones, because there is a lack of customer involve-ment.
The complication is the increase in pace in the customer’s
environment and how to create awareness in an accelerated world
where the customer is continuously surrounded by advertising.
How can McDonald’s maintain their existing customer base online
while creating a benefit for both the customer and the company?
!
?
QUESTION

7. 05
[O] OBJECTIVES:
CREATIVE IDEA⁸
Customers love playing
and experimenting with
the products. They want to
take part in the creation
process, to be more
involved in what the brand
does and to feel more
listened.
INSIGHT OPPORTUNITY
APPROACH OBJECTIVES
Convert young users into
advocates through greater
involvement and engage-ment.
Participate in and
lead the discussion about
the products offered in the
restaurants. Gain insight
about customer penchant.
The campaign is based on
crowdsourcing in order to
create engagement and
creative results. By using
this, the company can
collaborate while satisfying
the customer in different
ways.
• Create excitement and
digital buzz through
viral elements
• Empower consumers
• Position the company
as digital innovator
• Gain insights about
new products for R&D

8. 06
[S] STRATEGY:
CREATIVE STRATEGY⁸
The campaign is based on five different steps and aims to
involve customers with the claim:
Make it your break – you deserve it!
The key idea is that customers can:
• Create their own burger online
• Design their own campaign with the help of McDonald’s
and promote their burger through Social Media
• Experience their burger sold in every restaurant in the
UK
• Enjoy their customized break just the way they like it

9. 07
[TAC] TACTICS:
DETAILED STRATEGY
Five step strategy
Target market:
Students and young professionals.
Online value proposition:
Create your own product and become
famous.
Channels:
• Billboards
• Tube stations Offline
• POS (Restaurant)
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram Online
• Pinterest
• Mobile
1
2
3
4
5
CAMPAIGN PROMOTION
BURGER CREATION
INDIVIDUAL PROMOTION
REVISION AND FINISHING
DISTRIBUTION

10. 08
[TAC] ACTIONS:
DETAILED TACTICS
Offline promotion to create awareness for the campaign by
leveraging McDonald’s high offline visibility (Billboards,
Tube stations and POS).
Customers create their burger recipe online on the official
website of the company. All ingredients are predefined.
Customers promote their burgers online with the tools
provided by McDonald’s (Personalized banners, posters,
pictures and videos) in order to gain votes.
Winning burgers will be revised by R&D and will be
improved in collaboration with the inventors.
Five winning burgers will be promoted on TV featuring the
inventors and sold in all McDonald’s restaurants in the UK.
1
2
3
4
5

11. 09
[TAC] CONTROL:
MEASURES AND OUTCOME
For McDonald’s it is crucial to implement risk management in
order to prevent misuse and hijacking of the campaign
resulting in negative PR and attention (cf. #McDstories case⁹).
Recommendations:
• Predefine ingredients to avoid misuse in creating burgers
• Secure platform against hacker attacks
• Run a stress test on the platform before launch
• Prepare community manager in order to respond in real time
• Create contingency plans for all possible scenarios
In order to measure the outcome of the campaign, the
following control figures are recommended³:
• Number of unique visitors
• Number of repeat visitors
• Number of votes
• Media coverage (clippings)
RISK
MANAGEMENT
CONTROL
MEASURES
• Increase in followers
• Sales impacts
• Number of burger creations
(Source for R&D)

12. 10
BEST PRACTICE:
BENCHMARK10
McDonald’s already launched a similar campaign in
Germany 2011 which was used as best practice case in the
booklet. The German campaign had the following results:
• 116.000 burgers published, 12.000 individual
campaigns, 1.5 million votes, 7 million page views (the
most successful campaign on the McDonald’s Germany
web site), 21 million contacts achieved during the
campaign
• One of the most successful McDonald’s campaigns in
attracting so many new customers, selling promo
burgers and generation of high total revenue
• Cost-effective in relation to advertising expenses
• Repeated in 2012, the campaign was even more
successful
• Campaign was awarded by AME Silver Medallion,
category Social Media; nomination for “Best Social
Media Campaign 2011” (Best of Social Media Award)

13. BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Rezwan, M. (2010): Mcdonalds Historical Advertising Campaign you
Deserve a Break Today, retrieved from:
http://www.culinaryarts360.com/index.php/mcdonalds-historical-advertising-
campaign-you-deserve-a-break-today-7837/ (03.06.2014)
2. Chaffey, D.; Smith, P. (2008): eMarketing eXcellence – Planning and
optimizing your digital marketing, p.442
3. Rosa, H.; Scheuerman, W. E. (2009): High-speed Society: Social
Acceleration, Power, and Modernity; Pennsylvania State University Press.
4. Rose, D. E. (no date given): Social Media case study: How do
McDonald’s use it?, retrieved from: http://giraffesocialmedia.co.uk/social-media-
case-study-how-do-mcdonalds-use-it/ (02.06.2014)
5. Own research on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest (03.06.2014)
6. Alexa (2014): McDonalds.co.uk, retrieved from:
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/mcdonalds.co.uk (03.06.2014)
7. Drum Magazine (2012): McDonald's UK mobile app hits one million
downloads in less than 12 months, retrieved from:
http://www.thedrum.com/news/2012/08/01/mcdonalds-uk-mobile-app-hits-one-
million-downloads-less-12-months (03.06.2014)

14. BIBLIOGRAPHY
8. Creative strategy based on best practice example of McDonald’s Germany:
Woreczek, P. (2012): How to create greater customer engagement
through crowdsourcing, retrieved from:
http://www.slideshare.net/iStrategyConference/mcdonalds-pierre-woreczek-
slides-istrategy-london?qid=76bc7a65-0a33-4d87-a959-
4da9bf3fe2dd&v=default&b=&from_search=3 (03.06.2012)
9. Roberts, H. (2012): #McFail! McDonalds' Twitter promotion backfires as
users hijack #McDstories hashtag to share fast food horror stories, in: Daily
Mail Online, retrieved from: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-
2090862/McDstories-McDonalds-Twitter-promotion-backfires-users-share-fast-
food-horror-stories.html (07.06.2014)
10.Social Media Insights (2014): McDonald’s – Mein Burger, retrieved from:
http://socialmediainsights.de/case-studies/liste/mcdonalds/ (03.06.2014)