McDonald’s throws marketing weight behind fan-created burgers

A Leo Burnett-created TV ad will showcase the five winning burgers from the restaurant’s crowdsourcing competition in the summer tonight (14 October).

The documentary-style ad interviews couples who came close to winning the restaurant’s “My Burger” competition. One couple is shown to have entered an identical flavour combination to a winner but forgot to enter their version, while another created identical flavour combinations, bar one or two ingredients. The interviews alternate each week to match one of the five promoted burgers.

Each winning burger will go on sale for one week from tomorrow (15 October) alongside display advertising for the burgers across Facebook, Yahoo, Skype, YouTube, WeTransfer and MSN. The promotion will also be pushed through Kiss FM.

It is the final phase of the company’s “My Burger” experiment. McDonald’s invited fans to create their dream burgers using an online “burger builder” before handing the 11 most popular combinations over to an expert panel to judge the winners.

Alistair Macrow, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for McDonald’s UK, says: “This is the first time we have given our UK customers the unique opportunity to design their own beef burger, for the chance to appear on our world-famous menu. We have been overwhelmed by the public’s response. The five burgers that have made it onto our menus look and taste fantastic and I hope our customers will enjoy trying them out too.”

The customiseable burgers echo the restaurant’s recent pledge to ramp up personalised experiences in store. Despite previous personilisation trials, McDonald’s hopes a more concerted push, spanning menus and payment options, helps create a customer experience needed to win back younger diners from the likes of Nando’s and Subway.

The customer experience push has moved the company to invest more in widening its digital footprint. Yesterday, (13 October) the US arm of the business tested the robustness of its social media strategy with a Q&A sessions spanning Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. It took questions from Americans via the different portals and promised to deliver “real answers”.