Our strategy demanded content that was instantly understandable, sharable and always relevant in the light-speed world of culture trends for our audience. This needed to be true across our content, our format choices and the environment too. As a result we ensured that we were immediately on board with newly released ad formats – for example, our ‘“TAP AND HOLD TO REVEAL YOUR INNER MOST DESIRES” post ensured that the format and the way it would be consumed (thumbs on a mobile) would be part of the sharable enjoyment. We were also first to the punch for cultural trends through memetic content - our “NOT YOU” and “NAILED IT” posts which were inherently part of the cultural world our audience lived in. The best example is the headline grabbing, brain-bending “Bring McNuggets” optical illusion that was talked about across the globe in headlines on national and international news sites.

Our work had to go live on a weekly basis, always remaining relevant to what was happening in our audience’s cultural sphere at that precise moment. This meant building a constant flow of ideas through our in-house production team through to our partners in paid media to ensure that we were never late to the online party. We worked across both Facebook and Twitter ensuring the nuance of both platforms was taken into consideration and work was built with each platform’s unique culture in mind. Finally we carefully monitored performance of our content (alongside external culture-creators) to understand exactly what was working. This was delivered straight back into the funnel to ensure next week was even better.

The shift in content on the McDonald’s social media channels speaks for itself, however some of our highlights are truly amazing – “TAP AND HOLD” delivered 40 million in organic reach for a single post, our engagement rate is 4%, well above the previous internal standard and industry benchmarks. Overall for the year we’ve driven an astounding 91 million organic reach – 91 million feel good moments that bring McDonald’s closer to culture, to great content and to the hearts of our audience. An audience that we know definitely doesn’t see us corporate or dull anymore, since we’ve seen a huge increase in positive social sentiment of 21%. ‘Good Times’ for our audience and good times for McDonalds.