When Facebook approached McDonald’s with a grant, it made for the perfect test environment to prove that a solely digital campaign could positively impact stores sales and perception for a brick and mortar corporation. The “golden" idea was to use the grant to heavy up Facebook media support to TV-like weight levels in select regional markets to understand if store sales, guest counts and brand perception resulted in a lift when compared to control markets using TV. Utilizing identical video and creative assets that were implemented for the paid national TV support, McDonald’s attempted to prove efficacy of this platform. The decision was made to implement the test in April/May when the National marketing calendar was supporting the Angus Burger and Premium Chicken Sandwich. For the purpose of isolating the impact of Facebook in relation to other media associated with this National brand campaign, a custom experimental design was implemented for the purpose of this program. The perfect meal was built by identifying 6x McDonald’s regions and 2x markets within each region’s comparable sales data and guest counts. One market would receive amplified Facebook support comparable to TV weight levels through the grant funding and the others would not receive any Facebook support, while the remainder of the region experienced standard paid media amounts through national ad funding. • Incremental increase in sales and guest counts, generating a return on advertising spend of over 4X in test markets • Percentage of fans indicating they agree completely/somewhat with the statement “McDonald’s has food I feel good about eating" increased from 4-8% (high of 36%) during the campaign period • Percentage of fans stating “McDonald’s is their favorite restaurant to have lunch" increased by upwards of 13% (high of 37%)
http://awardshare.omd.com/Shorty%20Awards/McDonalds%20Facebook/
