McDonald’s ties with Facebook to ‘personalise campaigns at scale’
McDonald’s Europe is working with Facebook to pinpoint how it can personalise content at scale across the social network as it plans to introduce more reactive marketing into its calendar of seasonal activity.
Video: McDonald’s ‘Fry Futbol’ post
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHG3VTDi3bM
The fast food giant is looking to develop best-practice guidelines that will see it treat Facebook more like a broadcast channel when exploiting excitement around its sponsorship platforms such as the European Football Championships and the Olympics.
It means working directly with Facebook’s in-house creative and planning teams to target people who may not be big sports fans but have got caught up in the buzz around either event. While future advertising tools on the platform are likely to affect the plans between now and both events in 2016, the restaurant wants to offset its year-round advertising calendar with more responsive content capable of reaching consumers on a global level.
The guidelines are being pulled from the brand’s “Fry Futbol” reactive videos it created with Facebook for the World Cup, which it claims spread worldwide organically despite being focused on European markets. Quirky films starring its French fries recreated the tournament’s memorable moments for mobile users just hours after they happened. Production and media support were provided by Arc, Framestore and OMD.
Thomas Truttmann, head of sports marketing at McDonald’s Europe, says: “Looking to the future, we will see how we can replicate the success of Fry Futbol with our other sponsorships such as those we have with UEFA and the IOC and we will also continue to leverage these sponsorships on a local level.
“Personalised content is important – for example reaching people who we know are genuinely interested in football, the World Cup and McDonald’s – as this means we are delivering something that is relevant to real fans and adding value which we know can be a driver of brand trust. The realtime nature of the ‘Fry Futbol’ campaign has meant a new way of working for us with approvals needing to take place overnight to align with production schedules.”
Rob Newlan, the head of Facebook’s EMEA creative shop, adds: “Having an ‘always-on’ strategy has been something people thought meant pushing content out al the time, when in fact its really about being seletctful when you do and don’t talk to people.
“Scale’s important [on Facebook] but its much more about doing that with relevancy. That’s why we used real business metrics like sales and affinity to benchmark the work we did with McDonald’s so that the content was not just creative but also able to tangibly move the business forward.”
It is a thought shared by other FMCG brands such as Mondelez, which recently urged peers to accept they need to pay for reach and ultimately effectiveness on the channel.
