McDonald’s drive-thru only serves motor vehicles. So, we chose to raise awareness for a huge problem related to this that affects millions of people around the world: air pollution. This issue, that now kills more then 9 million people per year, has become so relevant that initiatives like World Car Free Day gained major attention in the past years.

With this insight, we decided to partner with the World Car Free Day movement in the McDonald’s way: the fun way. On September 22, we changed the rules of more then 400 drive-thrus across the country and invited people to leave their cars behind and use any other means of transportation they could imagine to order their meals.

With a simple yet powerful idea, we interacted with consumers in a fun and engaging way while reinforcing our convenience element.

The campaign started in mid September and went on until the first week of October. The first phase was the invitation. We developed an online animation video to explain the idea and invite people to participate. Along with that, we also used print and outdoor media.

The second phase happened during the World Car Free Day. On that day more then 400 restaurants were ready to welcome people without cars in their drive-thrus with special in-store visual communication and staff uniforms. We also had several digital influencers participating with different means of transportation and reminding their followers to do the same.

The third phase shared the results. An online video showed the the highlights of the day and results to serve as a closure to the idea. The unity in the campaign was maintained by the creative concept and the visual that brought consistency to executions in every touch point.

The campaign was a success and reached expressive results for McDonald’s with more than 46 million impressions. We saw an increase in consumer awareness and in the perception of convenience and consideration analyzing more than 96% positive responses to the idea on social networks.

The campaign also helped to increase traffic to the McDonald’s drive-thru. September 22 was the sales record on a weekday for many of the restaurants. And last, but not least, the idea was so impacting that we saw a change in the public’s behavior. The partnership with World Car Free Day helped to remove thousands of cars from the streets.