During the 2022 FIFA World Cup, McDonald's served as the official sponsor and had the opportunity to reach millions of fans over the course of a month. The challenge, however, was to shift the captivated fans’ attention to McDonald’s during the 90 minutes of each match and drive them to order through our app.

To achieve the above, McDonald's took advantage of their presence on the field: the red card and the yellow card – their two primary brand colors. Every time the referee pulled out a red or yellow card, McDonald’s gave away free fries. Fans participated and redeemed using their mobile phones. This was only applicable and redeemable during the remaining duration of every match.

We had a captive audience of fans who also love McDonald’s. Our challenge was to get their attention during the 90 minutes of the game and drive them to purchase.

We did this with one simple insight. Our 2 main brand colors were present on the field during every match:

Red card

Yellow card

We turned these iconic football symbols into a branded conversation that McDonald’s could own.

Every time the referee pulled out a red or yellow card, fans were invited to take a picture of the card using their mobile phones, draw our iconic fries on it and share it on their IG Story, tagging us and mentioning the brand’s global campaign’s hashtag for the 2022 FIFA World Cup: #WannaGoToMcD. Our hashtag aggregator would instantly Direct Message an auto-generated promo code for free fries to the first 1000 participants. This was only applicable and redeemable during the remaining duration of the match.

McDonald’s gave away more than 100,000 free fries throughout the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

Of course, with every pack of free fries the fans redeemed, they added burgers, nuggets and more to their carts online – increasing McDonald’s online sales to more than 80% during the match periods.

Their global campaign’s #WannaGoToMcDs was the top trending hashtag

during every match.

Additionally, they gained a 90% increase in brand interactions throughout the month.

And to top it all, their app was the most downloaded app of the month.