We wanted to change the conversation about McDonald’s.

Our cultural insights told us it’s rough out there in the world for people. The negativity, the snarkiness, the hatin’ – it’s a lot, and some of it’s directed towards our brand. We wanted to show people what side we’re on. What we’re made of. What we stand for. So we chose to do something people would truly notice. Feel. Care about. We wanted to turn heads, and change minds.

We did something seemingly small, but on a very large scale, designed to bring just a little more Lovin’ into the world.

The customer-centric focus and dynamic in-store action of Pay with Lovin’ improved consumer purchase intent (+8.1) and word-of-mouth (+9.1). Positive sentiment went from 16% pre-game to 26% post-game proving that McDonald’s customers chose Lovin’. McDonald’s achieved the #1 share of voice of Brand Conversation with Twitter garnering 23% share of mentions and 25% share of impressions of the top 20 brands on Super Bowl Sunday and was the most re-tweeted brand in a single day ever on Twitter with 433,000 re-tweets.

McDonald’s leveraged the excitement and awareness surrounding the largest media event of the year: the Super Bowl. Together, mass reaching vehicles and strategic sequencing generated national awareness and buzz. The effort kicked off with a teaser phase one week prior to the reveal that leveraged McDonald’s partnership with the NFL Pro Bowl. The spot ran in-game and amplified socially across select primetime shows, NFL digital properties, Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat throughout the week, generating additional excitement.

Super Bowl: the 60-second reveal ran during the second quarter. Post airing, it was amplified socially to drive in-store participation during the promotion window.

Our strategy was simple: prove to the world how a little more love in the world could change a lot. We needed to move beyond words to build belief. In order to increase our chances of shifting brand perceptions in a short amount of time, we targeted current brand loyalists/ambassadors and brand neutrals who had lost some affinity for McDonald's over time. Tapping into a cultural trend around the pervasiveness of negativity, we were able to deliver an impactful countercultural moment of what is possible when we do our part to put more love in the world.