The long-lost cousin of the snowboard is once again hitting the slopes, when Alain and his Team Monoski conquer the north in their pursuit to break the dream record. But in the end is the record really all that matters?Dreaming in Mono is one of the first truly transmedia advertising efforts that started with no pre-existing content. It’s a conscious experiment on McDonald’s part, a concept car designed to test new ways to improve emotional brand connection and engagement with Young Adult customers. The idea: advertising doesn’t just have to interrupt the content people are enjoying. It can be the content they’re enjoying.

Mono celebrates Scandinavia’s passion for winter sports, and gives a nod to ancient rivalries between Danes, Finns, Norwegians and Swedes. It reflects McDonald’s role as the region’s largest host of customers, focusing on McDonald’s guests and their dreams, rather than the brand or products.

The films ran in 8-minute episodes during regular programming on TV networks across the region as well as the Web and X-Box Live.The films integrated with a diverse collection of elements including a rich hub site, iPhone application, McDate tool, games, 'milkshake flashmob', pop songs released on Spotify, remixes, a music video, and more. Only by experiencing the range of pieces in their own specific channels could the audience tap the full Dreaming in Mono story.McDonald’s 465 restaurants and 40,000-strong staff were also activated through merchandising, films, crew ski tags, exclusive crew site and competitions, all casting the crew as ambassadors via their own social networks.And a real-time PR war-room was set up to seed, spread, react and even drive additional content launched with later episodes.

Dreaming in Mono more than fulfilled its mission as an advanced integrated experiment in innovative marketing strategies. The activity flattened the standard media/production budget balance from 80/20 to 35/65, yet it was one of Scandinavia’s most talked about recent marketing initiatives, provoking widespread discussion in many online forums as well as showing up in mainstream press. Research shows 10% of reactions were negative, 15% neutral and 76% positive.Mono has had 1.5 million episode views to date, while exclusive deals with individual TV stations provided huge audience and delivered almost 7 times more ratings value than the price paid.

In the end Mono spread from its Nordic target area around the world. In an unusual move demonstrating the activity’s uniqueness we aggregated everyone’s tweets, blogs and articles, uncensored – positive and negative alike – right on the hub-site.