Our task was to connect with Gen Z in a way that spoke their language, all while focusing on consolidating McDonald´s chicken platform and introducing a new CBO variation – a burger already loved. With the right product in hand, all that was left was to understand their likes and create a campaign geared towards a crowd big on peer influence and heavily reliant on social media.

Comms Goals:

- Build chicken product’s awareness and connect with Gen Z.

- Reconnect the brand’s connection with Gen Z audience.

- Build CBO iconicity within its fans community and differentiate from other competition chicken proposals, leveraging its recipe and unique flavors.

- Expand CBO experience to other consumers, preferably Gen Z that prefers good tasting chicken products.

Business Goals:

- Grow CBO base fans.

- Reinforce main meal’s market share.

- Increase CBO frequency sales.

Inspired by the corporate universe, we created an influencer position at McDonald’s: Chicken Bacon Officer (CBO). The chosen candidate was a 20-year-old Gen Zer, fan of the CBO sandwich, that started calling the shots for all things CBO. He took over every bit of the communication, spoke in his own language and used his power of influence to make a true connection between the brand and his own generation Z.

The CBO (Chicken Bacon Onion) is Gen Z’s favorite McDonald’s order in the country. So, when we had to launch a new version of the sandwich, we understood the importance of engaging with this fan base effectively.

Understanding Gen Z's aversion to conventional brand communication, we sought a different approach, one that mirrored their media habits and tapped into the potential of social platforms for user-generated content and talkability.

With half of Gen Z aspiring to be influencers themselves and already showing more loyalty to influencers than to brands, our strategy focused on finding a Gen Z advocate to promote the CBO brand. Success meant empowering them and following their lead.

It all started as a recruitment campaign on LinkedIn (then TikTok, Ig, Fb) and a legion of CBO fans applied for the position posting a video on TikTok. This generated a lot of content. 15 of these candidates were brought for interviews and this also led to more content. The first Chicken Bacon Officer was revealed on a social media videos and posts, TV ad, OOH. After that he took over McDonald’s Portugal social media contents in his own style, spoke at McDonald’s Portugal annual event, visited several McDonald’s to motivate his teams and was interviewed by some of the main tv channels, radio stations, podcasts and publications. This also generated a bunch of content. But this is just the beginning of our Chicken Bacon Officer. His work will go on.

The results showed the true power of our Chicken Bacon Officer’s influence. Generating talkability and increasing affinity with Gen Z.

Sales growth was impressive:

• +34 UPT’s sold comparing to the last CBO launch, which represented an increase of 79% in sales.

Social media guaranteed awareness needed with total 32M impressions and 4.1M users reached:

• Meta: 1.2M users reached, 10M impressions, 51k clicks, 35k thruplays, 0.33% view rate (vs 0.27% bench*), + 200k likes, shares and comments.

• TikTok: 1.5M users reached, 22M impressions, 34k clicks, +389k views, + 986 followers, +10k likes, shares and comments.

• Youtube: 1M views on YouTube, completion rate of 66%.

• Spotify: 44k Impressions.

McDonald's chicken perception soared:

• +6pp in “Has great chicken taste” brand attribute (kantar) vs last CBO campaign.

• Stood out in “brand difference”, “new information”, and "brand for someone like me” (+2pp vs last CBO campaign)