For McDonald’s Covid-19 meant shutting the doors to the most powerful consumer engagement medium we had – our dining rooms. These spaces where the community comes together are key for a brand that has built its Indonesian presence off the back of serving the community being core to our brand purpose.

Driving local relevance with this community when we had been disconnected meant that we to find a new way to stand out and be meaningful to our core audience of families.

A local platform which would help drive meaningfulness was critical and we had to think beyond that classic engagement time of Ramadan and Independence Day where the brand was leading with integrated activations.

As we thought about the importance of these days we struck gold with ‘National Heroes Day’ which was not getting much support beyond schools and yet was a powerful locally relevant moment.

Replacing Happy Meal toys, with meaningful DIY, action figures that tell the rich stories of Indonesia’s past . Understanding that toys are a key part of the learning process , we created McDonald's Pahlawan (Heroes Edition) series - celebrating 6 of Indonesia’s iconic freedom fighters.

The limited edition series was embedded with a QR code which on scanning would narrate their heroics. Families were encouraged to learn together and the series was bundled with Family weekend package.

Demographic: SES A, B, C Millennial Families with young kids. Working parents who are struggling to find time for their families and also find it difficult to engage kids obsessed with their devices and games.

Taking inspiration from the quote, "A great nation is a nation that respects the services of their heroes" - Ir. Soekarno, former President of Indonesia, we embarked on a mission to bring to life the stories of Indonesia’s forgotten heroes to a generation obsessed with superheroes of Marvel, DC and apathetic to the rich history of our freedom struggles. Given that family time was compromised during co-vid, we created an opportunity for families to learn together.

The execution tapped into existing monuments, roads named after heroes as story telling devices, scanning those would direct lead to our brand platform which detailed the heroics and struggles.

The campaign was kicked off on National Heroes day in November 2021 and given the immense success the Heroes Edition will become a part of the annual series from McDonald’s.

To introduce the series, we conducted a thought provoking social experiment to establish how our homegrown heroes were not capturing the imagination of our kids. Sharing iconic images of heroes which we see in history books, on monuments and even currency notes, with kids and parents, we created realization how unaware we are about stories of our homegrown heroes.

Given the digital maturity of our audiences we wanted to ensure we engaged them through the right formats Scanning of the QR code on pack or scanning a monument dedicated to heroes led them to the stories of the hero being narrated by Indonesia’s leading storyteller Kak Awam.

McDonald’s Pahlawan was not designed to bring in incremental sales, but it brought in that and much more. What began as a pandemic pivot has evolved into a powerful platform to continue highlighting forgotten heroes and helping families connect while learning together.

The campaign helped provide a strong impetus to our brand building efforts

Scores on

Brand I trust has jumped +4 points vs. 2021

Brand which lets kids and families have fun together + 4 points vs. 2021

Brand which is an innovative brand +5 points vs 2021

This initiative helped drive sense of pride amongst the community and received a rare endorsement from the Social Minister of Indonesia and more importantly we also received heartfelt gratitude from the families of the Heroes.

The positive sentiment was echoed by the media with a PR value of USD 7,204,313 in earned media off a campaign despite a small budget.