The creative idea is about using the strength of clicks, comments and shares from clickbait stories about McDonald’s on Facebook; we needed to fight fire with fire!

We created ‘The Fast News’. A news outlet on Facebook, which sole purpose was to spread even more clickbait stories about McDonald’s. Or at least that was what it looked like…

Based on the most talked-about fake news stories, we created clickbait posts and released them one by one. When clicking the posts, the viewer was exposed to the truth behind the myth, explained with a short copy and a single image – all delivered with humour and charm.

This is how we got the Danes to read and comment on the truth behind the myths about McDonald’s. Once ‘clickbaited’, the Danes started sharing the stories and tricking their friends into reading the boring truth about McDonald’s Denmark.

We created 14 Facebook posts and launched them one-by-one from ‘The Fast News’ Facebook page. Each post had a carefully crafted headline without any false statements about McDonald’s, but at the same time it prompted the myth that we wished to attack.

When clicking a post, you would open an article on ‘The Fast News’ website. On the website, you could read and share more clickbait stories thus spreading the campaign.

To avoid a spam effect, we applied a reach and frequency strategy to ensure that we reached as many as possible within our target audience, but at the same time made sure that people only saw the same post once but at least three different posts.

To follow up on Facebook users who did not click the posts, we launched clickbait videos that revealed the truth behind the myth only a few seconds after the clickbait headline was shown.

Facebook posts

• The campaign generated 7.9 million impressions, with a reach of 1.7 million users. A target group of 2.2 million users equals a reach of 78% of the target group (and we are just 3.5m Danish users on Facebook)

• 301,718 link clicks from 255,616 unique users = 15% of the users went to the ‘The Fast News’ website – that is a unique CTR of 15%

• The campaign reached an impressive 900,000 post engagements

The video posts

• The video posts were targeted at the same users, but excluding visitors to ‘The Fast News’ site. The video posts generated 195,032 video views

Website

• 280,000 users visited the website, reading an average of four stories each and spending a total of 4,500 hours with the boring truth about McDonald’s Denmark

Trust score

• And most importantly of all, the trust score increased by 21% in just two weeks – from 25% to 39%

This campaign made it possible for McDonald’s to engage and start a dialogue with consumers that otherwise would not engage with the brand. The high level of engagement from the consumers helped McDonald’s spread the true stories behind the myths about their food, organization and employee working conditions. McDonald’s challenged the target audience to engage and spend time learning about the truths behind the myths and so they did.

It was critical to attack the most common and damaging myths, so via consumer research and mapping of the ‘real’ clickbait stories, we found the topics that concerned the Danes the most, and that would have the greatest effect on their trust in the brand.

We wanted to reach the people that would read the ‘real’ clickbait stories, but decided not to target haters, since they rarely change their minds. True fans already love the brand, so we focused on people who feel indifferently about the brand*.

We used Facebook as a platform for the campaign since the ‘real’ clickbait stories are spread here and by creating sensational clickbait headlines linking to short articles with the truth behind the myth, we got the target group to click and read several clickbait stories on the website and share with friends.

*Facebook population deducted McDonald’s fan base of both lovers and haters.

Social media have been flooded with fake news about McDonald’s. And new stories keep popping up, getting read and shared by millions of people, which obviously create distrust in McDonald’s.

These clickbait stories may seem like an impossible ‘opponent’ when the task is getting the Danes to understand and believe the truth about McDonald’s Denmark – especially when the clickbait stories are so much more interesting than the (boring) truth.

We needed to debunk the myths that Danes believe about McDonald’s Denmark and start raising their trust in the brand – and maybe even move them towards being less prone to believing the next fake news story about McDonald’s.