McDonald’s had about 1800* restaurants in China, and about 1000 dessert kiosks which sell only beverage and dessert. Dessert kiosks locate separately from the main restaurant counter, but usually face to high traffic.

Ice cream cone is one of the iconic products of McDonald’s in China. Majority of the cones are sold at dessert kiosks because of accessibility.

McDonald’s is well known of its ice-cream cone being good taste at affordable price. Consumer insights indicate flavor news is a key driver to trigger impulsive purchase. Therefore McDonald’s China offers rotational seasonal flavors every few months to stimulate off-take.

This campaign is to promote limited time offered Sakura flavor cone.

*store count up to the time of promotion

Baidu has over 70% market share of digital map.  We marked out 986 McDonald’s dessert kiosks in 135 cities on Baidu map with an ice-cream cone icon.  It also helps to promote the visibility of McDonald’s presence.

Within 10 days campaign period, the push message reached over 10 million consumers.  Baidu map gained opportunity to showcase its expertise of strong map functions such as routing. 

While free cone drives customer to McDonald’s, it is a fun experience, and create talkability to generate UGC being shared on social media.

-McDonald’s dessert kiosk traffic increased by 28%

-‘Sakura Run’ topped hot topic list on Sina Weibo (social media)

-Within 10 days, 20 million visits of the campaign website and 500 thousand retweets; 70 million impressions gained on social media

-The campaign helps McDonald's, the traditional offline QSR brand, to gain perception of being cutting-edge and innovative