In China, every spring when the peach flowers bloom they are a symbol of endearing beauty and prosperous relationships. This cultural meaning of the peach flower and the McDonald’s message of “Let's good together with McDonald’s” are closely related. Today, people are constantly online and staying connected by smartphones. Combining several advanced mobile technologies, photo sharing, voice search, LBS, and other elements of mobile social media two unique “peach flower” experiences to promote McDonald’s new peach flower cone. That means people can get rewarded for engaging, being entertained, building relationships though an online social community to increase brand recognition with McDonald’s.

The success of this digital campaign started by utilizing 3 of Baidu’s biggest mobile platform apps like Mobile Baidu, Baidu Map and Baidu Nuomi from its comprehensive catalog of over-100-million-user-apps. Voice recognition was used with the Mobile Baidu app. User involvement required opening the app and saying, “I want peach flower”. The customers then took a selfie picture, made a “Peach Flower Emoji” on the event page, and finally uploaded the “emoji” to social media, like WeChat and Weibo and received a 10-cent peach flower cone. For “Peach Flower Fate” a user entered to win discounted cones. Customers opened Baidu Map, shared a code, and friends that are “nearby” were displayed. The built in LBS made it possible to find that special someone within search area and enjoy cones or other discounted menu items at McDonald’s.

The campaign was executed between 2-14 and 2-28-2016 as a nation wide event.

The success of this digital mobile only campaign can be attributed to the use of several advanced technologies that engaged customers. The “Peach Flower Cone” event pages received over 50 million views; produced over 10 million posts and re-posts on social and earned media. The stores involved reached 2200 making it one of McDonald’s most-covered digital campaigns. More than 7 million consumers participated and over 4 million peach flower cones were given out. An overall 30% increase in total cone sales was recorded during this time as well. Combined online and offline exposures reached a total of 380 million.