The relationship between food and gamers has been around long before the gaming industry boom.

McDonald’s attempts to infiltrate the gaming space have been limited to standard buys – easily overshadowed by the bolder moves Wendy’s and Burger King – who have brokered global deals with giant titles like Fortnite and Call of Duty.

Given the growth trajectory for this audience, McDonald’s knew we could do better. We remained at one-off efforts while our competitors invested in full-blown immersive experiences.

Our challenge was to unlock a new way-in for McDonald’s to engage with the gaming audience, and in so doing, boost brand engagement and brand mentions.

To stake our claim on all gaming food, McDonald’s introduced A GAME WITHIN ANY EXISTING GAME -a virtual hunt to tag McDonald’s look-alikes in any kind of video game.

INFLUENCERS TRIGGER THE HUNT

The country’s #1 gaming influencer kicked things off by finding a Big Mac lookalike and tagging McDonald’s. Her reel/real-life friends (influencers by their own right with their own communities) were first to catch on, sharing their own screengrabs.

Before long, legions of hungry gamers were sharing screengrabs of food that were digital doppelgangers of McDonald’s menu items.

BRAND RESPONDS AND REWARDS

As this flurry of organic activity played out right on influencers’ socials, McDonald’s kept close watch, intercepting screengrabs in real time. Gamers received coupons equivalent to their screengrab, which they could redeem via McDelivery As gamers showed off their free grub on social, more and more people got hungry, and got ordering!

We based our approach on what already existed in the gaming universe.

WE TAPPED AN EXISTING ENDEMIC GAMING EXPERIENCE

Whether it’s done for the sake of posterity or for bragging rights, screengrabbing is a behavior so well-grained in gamers, it needs no explanation and worked across all types of games!! It was just a matter of directing gamers to do this!

…and do it with something that we realized, was ours to claim in the first place.

WE SET OUR SIGHTS ON THOUSANDS OF ICONS ALREADY EXISTING IN GAME

Food shows up in almost every game in almost countless ways. And any gamer will agree : food in video games, despite being unbranded, look just like McDonald’s.

Why try and integrate McDonald’s into one game, when McDonald’s food has been in who knew how many games all along- hiding in plain sight?! It was just a matter of claiming them!

While brands were negotiating to be integrated into games, not only did McDonald’s NOT need to pay any publisher, McDonald’s also wasn’t limited to any one game. Thus far, this epic cross-gaming hunt has surfaced McDonald’s grub in over 350 DIFFERENT GAMING TITLES – from The Sims to Roblox to Final Fantasy to Grand Theft Auto.

In a single move, McDonald’s asserted its iconicity and ubiquity and got gamers to think of McDonald’s every time they see fast food inside ANY video game.

Even tastier than this unprecedented spread of games? Our brand and business results!

· Reached 27 million gaming fans (that’s ⅔ of Philippines’ gaming population!)

· +108% brand mentions

· +140% brand engagement

· +22% fries and add-ons sold ! Contributing to +35% McDelivery sales (all thanks to hungry gamers ordering on top of their coupons,