Only 62 % of the total eligible population, of urban India, turned up to vote in the 2014 elections, i.e. 280 million didn’t.

Social media is always buzzing with the youth commenting on the state of affairs of the country. They blame the system & conveniently go back to their life. And this year, the youth was to be the largest voting population.

While many brands & influencers have tried to encourage voting; they end up being preachy and not thought-provoking.

If they’re hanging out at McDonald’s instead of going to vote, we felt it was our responsibility to make our customers recognise theirs’.

But we wanted a message that didn’t just move our customers; it needed to move anyone and everyone who was considering giving up his vote. So the act needed to have high shareability.

You take your vote for granted because you don’t realise what you’re giving up. To drive home this point, we took an everyday act in the restaurant and changed it a bit.

We picked the most popular McDonald’s in the first city to go to vote. And then orders as usual.

Just that if you didn’t have the election-ink on your finger, we took away your right to choose. No matter what you ordered, we choose what you’ll have.

The message:

You lose your right to choose, when you don’t vote.

#MakeYourChoice

We started with provoking, but then nudged them in every way to get to a booth.

Directions to the nearest booth were given, both at the store and in our delivery-app. Real time polling updates using their favourite McDonald's orders. And we celebrated those who voted with special offers and through a digital wall-of-fame at the restaurant.

McDonald’s caters to 119 million visitors. If we go by the percentage of non-voters in urban India, we’re looking at over 45 million who won’t be casting their vote. And this election will have one of the largest population of young voters, which is 80% of our audience.

And the youth see election day more as a holiday declared by the respective states. And they had plans of spending it chilling at malls, movies or even a McDonald’s.

We felt that more than telling them to vote, we needed to help the youth realise what giving up their vote actually meant. And we knew that if our video was moving enough, the youth would spread our message.

We picked our most popular restaurant in Hyderabad, the first city to go to vote, and rigged it with multiple hidden cameras. On 11th April, Day 01 of elections, it seemed to be business as usual.

Just that any customer who didn’t have the election-ink on his finger, lost his right to choose. Whatever may have been the order; he/she got what we chose for them. We completed our message through our servers and through tray mats.

We targeted each city as the headed into their elections through Facebook, Twitter & Instagram.

Through Instagram & Facebook posts, we brought alive the real time voter turnouts and other election stats using everyone’s favourite McDonald’s orders.

Our delivery app also doubled up as a voting booth locator. And our restaurants displayed directions to the nearest booth.

Special offers were created for voters. And we pushed these offers to voters offline and online.

Earned media worth Rs. 3,51,78,500 - 88X return on our total media investment of Rs. 4,00,000.

We were the most shared election video on Whatsapp - A potent medium that is affecting voter opinions in India more than other media put together. (Source: Business Insider)

Award winning Padma Shree journalist Sucheta Dalal applauded our efforts and even retweeted it. It was picked up by both national & International publications.

Our guest count increased by almost 17% in the regions that went into polling.

We managed to garner 8,16,50,000 impressions with a total reach of 5,98,00,000

The most successful video in the history of McDonald’s India.