Situation: The mission of Ronald McDonald House Charities is to create and support initiatives that have a positive impact on the well-being of sick children, their families and loved ones. In Sweden there are five RM Houses close to specialist care for children with difficult diagnoses. Each year, approximately 4,000 families live at the Houses. Many of them stay for long periods of treatment.

Brief: create a brand activation to raise awareness for Ronald McDonald House Charities and their important work for families with severely ill kids.

Objectives:

Ronald McDonald House Charities:

• Increase “is an organisation I trust” from 51% (2021) to 55% (2022).

• Increase “is an organisation I can consider to support” from 49% (2021) to 53% (2022).

McDonald’s:

• Increase “is a company I trust” from 44% (norm) to 50%.

• Increase “is a comany that takes social responsibility” from 49% (norm) to 55%.

Sweden's sixth official Ronald McDonald House - on Roblox. A virtual playroom based on ideas from the sick kids themselves and only available for children staying at the houses IRL. The House in Roblox makes it possible for children at all Houses in Sweden to meet, play and heal together. Soon, it will become accessible to children at all Ronald McDonald Houses in the world – connecting seriously ill children from over 60 countries.

The target audience for the brand experience on Roblox was families with sick kids who are staying/have stayed at Ronald McDonald Houses in Sweden. The kids are between 1-12 years old. The target audience for the integrated campaign was the general population of Sweden.

Approach: To reach and activate the sick children and their families we used the Social media accounts for Ronald McDonald House in the different cities the houses are to activate its community on Facebook and Instagram. To activate the sick children living at the houses IRL, we printed posters for the houses and the nearby hospitals. The operational managers at the houses informed all families about the initiative and provided the kids with the code they need to get access to the world on Roblox.

To make an emotional impact on the general population, we had a media mix for broad reach and high impact.

The process of building Ronald McDonald House on Roblox took 6 months from idea to launch.

We based the whole game world on interviews with a selection of children across the 5 Ronald McDonald Houses in Sweden and asked them what their dream house would look like. This drew out their limitless imagination and gave us incredible ideas that we brought to life in the game world such as:

A room where it’s always Christmas.

Piano keys stairs.

A maze room.

A cinnamon bun wall, where you can grab a bun on-the-go and another will grow immediately in the same spot.

An upside-down room.

A place in the house for teleportation.

A zoo outside the house with an aquarium pool.

Cat-shaped beds with canopies.

Housekeeping robots.

The multi-storied, multi-coloured house complete with a huge outdoor environment was launched in November 2022. The multi-roomed house includes:

An indoor aquarium pool.

Christmas room.

Discoball room.

Upside-down room.

Rocket and space room.

Indoor beach.

Thor’s rollercoaster.

Doris’ Water Park.

Tilde’s Treetop Adventure.

Outdoor red carpet catwalk.

Giant mushroom and tree garden.

And more…

We also designed and built 3 additional features to the Roblox Ronald McDonald House that was auctioned in the annual foundation gala. Winners of the auction had an in-game plaque next to the feature, dedicated to them.

These features were:

Water slide park.

Treetop obstacle course.

Rollercoaster.

The auction of these features raised almost 150,000 kr (equivalent to just over £11,000).

The assets created for the house were used in the national omnichannel campaign to raise awareness for the charity. Channels included:

DOOH.

Printed billboards.

Print.

Cinema.

Video.

TV commercials.

Paper tray inlets used in all McDonald's restaurants across Sweden.

Ronald McDonald House Roblox:

- Total visits 52.5k

- Upvotes 84%

Ronald McDonald House Charities:

“Is an organization I trust” increased from 51% (2021) to 62% (2022), 7 ppt above objective.

“Is an organization I can consider to support” increased from 49% (2021) to 59% (2022), 6 ppt above objective.

McDonald's:

“Is a company I trust” increased from 44% to 58%, an increase by +31%, 8 ppt above objective.

“Is a company that takes social responsibility” increased from 49% to 61%, an uplift of +24%, 6 ppt above objective.