McDonald’s has a big challenge as there is a big difference between employees' experience and the public’s perception of working at McDonald’s, so we needed to reduce that gap and make them be perceived as a good employer. So, with the highest levels of youth unemployment since the 30’s and the pandemic with its consequences for young people, McDonald's wanted to take the opportunity to tell the story of how they've always cared about and believed in Swedish youths.

The following campaign objectives was defined:

Increase Good Employer by 20% vs 2020

Increase the Observation of the campaign by 20% vs norm

Increase the Liking of the campaign by 20% vs norm

Increase Better impression by 10% vs norm

Increase Visit intention by 10% vs norm

Increase sales vs competition by 2% in May

Increase visits vs competition by 1% May

The pandemic has made it more difficult than ever for youths to enter the labor market. And if that wasn’t enough, the young generation has also been portrayed in the media by adults accusing them of being irresponsible, lazy and selfish.

We've all heard it. It’s how young people are described today and it's how it has sounded since the time of Aristotle. For every young generation, new unflattering, preconceived notions come from the adult world that makes it difficult to enter the labor market.

As one of Sweden's biggest youth employers, McDonald's know that these preconceived notions are completely misleading. So, to show that McDonald's is Big enough to make a difference for Sweden's youths, McDonald's let a choir of young people speak. And take tone. With an epic music video, McDonald's invited the rest of Sweden to join them and open the door for the next hopeless generation.

Based on the insight that every young generation has been labelled by the adult world and that McDonald's have believed in every hopeless generation, the main message was that McDonald's rallies behind Sweden's young people and urges more companies to open the door for them.

The target audience was politicians, Sweden's business community and industry experts on the subject. Based on this, we packaged McDonald's recruitment process - The McDonald's Model - in an extensive report and made it accessible for anyone to learn about McDonald's view on youths and how that has paved the way for them to be a successful business.

We had McDonald's CEO, Joachim Knudsen, write an open letter on the subject in Sweden's biggest business magazine and alongside the broad consumer facing campaign, we also held a seminar with industry experts and politicians to further deepen the engagement and interest ot the campaign.

We began by processing politicians and companies in business press based on the angle on how the McDonald's model have been successful in decreasing the youth unemployment and how it has been an important part of creating a successful business.

Based on the same angle, we then hosted a seminar and with politicians and industry experts there, which we knew would increase their incentives in talking about the message.

To reach more academic press to add further credibility to our message, we then focused on the angle that all generations have been considered hopeless.

After that, we turned to media outlets focusing on music with the angle that McDonald's have re-written the classic and famous song Open your door.

The campaign was picked up by all relevant target audiences and generated M2,5$ in earned media impressions. The leader of Swedens biggest political party talked about the campaign in his social media, calling on other companies to follow McDonald’s example.

The leading professor on generations in Northern Europe, Anders Parment, wrote a debate article on the campaign together with the CEO of one of the most renowned research institutes, The Youth Barometer. McDonald’s CEO was invited by Stockholms Chamber of Commerce to talk about the McDonald’s-Model and the campaign was listed as the best #5 music videos during 2021 by Popmani, Sweden’s biggest magazine on pop music.

The campaign increased "Good Employer" by +43% in the younger audience (16-24yo) and the observation for the campaign was 81%, which is an increase of +35% vs the norm. Despite that it was a three-minute film, as many as 71% saw the whole film.

59% said they got a better impression of McDonald's, which is an increase of +40% vs norm. This resulted in an uplift of visit intent of 53%, an increase of +23% vs the norm. In addition, the campaign made people feel that McDonald's takes social sustainability seriously as 52% said this, +26% vs the norm.

With these uplifts, McDonald's got +6,4% in sales and +5.5% in visits vs competition. McDonald's market share increased from 46.3% in January 2021 to a staggering 51.8% in June 2021. In only 6 months.