UAE is known to have a diverse set of food and culture. But there’s one trend that has been rapidly getting popular across all cuisines i.e., spicy food. To cater to the rising love for spicy food in the region, McDonald’s wanted to promote its Spicy Menu, bringing people’s attention to its spicy chicken range and serving them truly delicious spicy treats.

We took the most natural reaction of our delicious spicy range i.e., the slurping sound, and turned it into a language. Through a series of films, we spiced up everyday conversations to show what McSpicy really sounds like. We noticed it started picking up as a trend. So we decided to go all the way and create music with it. We collaborated with hip hop artists across the region and created original songs with this unique slurping sound. Through films on TV, we reached out to our family audience. And through spicy songs we grew among the youth organically on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Our research showed that more that 80% of the people in the UAE prefer spicy food. That inspired us to delve further into the human behavior. Why do people like spicy food so much? Especially, when is causes a certain level of discomfort. We looked deep into our subjects and we realized that the power of taste is greater than any discomfort caused while consuming it. And that inspired us to take the sound of discomfort of a spicy slurp and own it as the sound of satisfaction our Spicy Menu could give.

We created a series of films with everyday conversations and added the slurping sound to every dialogue. And then we took that sound to the studio and invited artists from across a region, such as Flipperachi, Randar, N1yah, Muhannad, Moh Flow, Lileazy, Menon and MT9, to write and record rap songs with our unique sound. We recorded music videos with each one of them and shared on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and suddenly Speak Spicy became a trending style in the Hip Hop community.

When every other food brand used visuals and words, we chose the power of sound to promote our Spicy Menu. From social media to live events, our spicy flavours made music everywhere, making #SpeakSpicy a trending style of rap. Soon the internet witnessed a whole new sub-genre of hip-hop, giving us 195 million impressions and 6.6 million organic views. Our McDelivery page received 2.7 million visits. Sales increased by 38% generating over 48,000 online orders. With Speak Spicy, we gave people a whole new sound to play with. But above all we gave them the true satisfaction of delicious spicy food.