Tag: Distribution

McDonald’s in Europe, along with OMD, Facebook and YouTube, has launched a new activation for UEFA Euro 2016 that breathes life into and raises awareness of McDonald’s long-running Player Escort programme, which gives kids across Europe the opportunity to walk out on the pitch hand in hand with their football heroes and be right in the middle of the championship’s excitement.

The activation is based on the insight that kids have incredible natural enthusiasm and their unfiltered reactions spark the inner kid in their parents and other grown-ups. Through this McDonald’s could ignite the feel-good, good-neighbour feeling that they want to be associated with – and the UEFA European Championship’s was the perfect platform.

The campaign is an innovative and highly complex activation that delivers near-real-time content from the tournament through the eyes of the Player Escort competition winners – 60-second long-form content in the form of a diary of their experience at the tournament amplified on YouTube targeting parents, while the short-form videos, gifs and images showing the kids’ emotions and reactions to the matches are promoted on Facebook, reaching a wider family audience. This content was tailored to the audience – so if, for example, Slovakia won a match, Slovakians would see content of triumphant, excited children while their defeated opponents would see posts around a ‘better luck next time’ sentiment.

The content from individual matches is curated by teams on the ground and delivered to OMD in London by midnight, where the fully integrated team of creatives and content distribution and amplification specialists works overnight to produce market-specific content, seek UEFA, brand and legal approval and distribute and amplify the content – all by 9am CET the following morning so that it is part of the social buzz and water-cooler conversation. In addition, content with anticipative imagery and messaging is created in advance of matches to drive excitement.

This complex activation with involvement from multiple stakeholders and a near-real-time, overnight effort from an inter-disciplinary team at McDonald’s in Europe, OMD (including in-house creative, amplification and distribution specialists), Facebook and YouTube as well as McDonald’s sponsorship agency in Europe Leo Burnett and production teams at Shoot the Company will convey the crucial messaging that McDonald’s is a brand that cares about kids and committed to getting them active and into sport, as well as strengthening the ‘good neighbour’ brand positioning.