Italy is the land of food and with the gourmet burger restaurants phenomenon, eating hamburgers in Italy, especially in Milan, has become something for by refined palates seeking quality and an increasingly more sophisticated offering.

In this context, McDonald’s is considered to be just a low quality food provider.

The main objective of the campaign were to change consumer perception about McDonald’s food quality and improve its image.

Targeting those consumer who have a prejudice against McDonald’s, we decided to demonstrate with a social experiment how much their opinion on McDonald's burgers is affected just by the atmosphere and the environment in which it is served.

We opened a McDonald’s gourmet burger restaurant under a fake name and image, which served the McDonald’s Bacon Clubhouse. Only 3 day later, the real identity of the restaurant has been revealed.

The campaign, which is still ongoing, had an immediate PR success. The major National Newspaper and consumer become to share the news in a spontaneous way and started to speak about the brand and its food quality in a very positive way.

Last April, McDonald's opened a gourmet burger restaurant in the heart of the foodie culture in Milan, near to temple of Italian food Eataly under a fake image and name – “Single Burger”. The restaurant owners were 2 Italian well-known chefs from MasterChef.

The burger served was the Bacon Clubhouse McDonald’s burger under the name of House Burger. It was prepared exactly with the same ingredients and cooked with same procedures used in all McDonald's restaurants, but sold at a more expensive price.

The restaurant worked with real customers for 3 days with the fake image. During the last day, the real identity of the restaurant has been revealed in a stunning way. After the revealing event, the restaurant stayed opened under the name of “McDonald's Premium”.

All the filmed contents in the restaurants have been used to produce the planned campaign: 90" web film and a 30" TVC.

The campaign had an immediate pr success and the brand gained a positive high momentum.

The news has been reported by the major National Newspaper and food blog: “McD’s makes fun of gourmands with a fake”, “chapeau to McD’s, who made a face to foodies”, “McD’s demonstrates It's not the gay coat that makes the gentleman”, “people thought to eat a burger gourmet, instead they were eating a gourMac.”.

Digital results: almost 90.000 unique visit for the dedicated area in McD’s website, for a total of more than 100.000 clicks (+40% rise in online visitors, compared to last year).

Published Social Contents have reached more than 3.000.000 views from unique users.

Total interaction: more than 46.000.

PR Coverage: more than 23 millions of impressions.

Business: + 103% sales after the tvc campaign (compared to last year).