When it comes to branded content, China is a very challenging market due to the huge amount of illegal piracy products. In many ways, the copyrights and laws about intellectual property have no meaning in China.

At the same time, China is taking huge leaps when it comes to digital and mobile. There are approximately 300m smartphone users in China and the number is increasing constantly. Digital and mobile revolution are also loosening the government's grip on media although there are still several various government agencies and regulators administering the media.

"Magic in McDonald's" partnered up two industry giants, McDonald's China and Rovio Entertainment. The combination resulted in a campaign that used Rovio's location based technology and their global hit game Angry Birds as a medium.

First, gamers check from the in-game map if there is a Magic location (McDonald's restaurant) nearby. Once inside the restaurant, "Magic" rewarded the gamers with unique, McDonald's branded game content that could only be experienced while visiting one of the McDonald's restaurants. When the gamer then left the McDonald's restaurant, the game in his or her mobile device went back to normal.

The campaign was a huge success: The share of visits rose to 20% when compared with key competitors, the frequency of visits rose to 28,1% higher when compared with key competitors and the campaign also lifted overall brand perception as the brand favorability rose to 25,9% above the key competitors.

In addition McDonald's was seen as a modern brand associated with games and gaming as the campaign was widely reported in various high profile advertising and tech media, for example in Advertising Age, Business Insider, Uberzigmo, PSFK, Pocket Gamer, M.I.C Gadget and MediaPost.