The Challenge
Festive seasons are a key marketing moment for quick-service restaurants because it is an opportunity to refresh the menu with festive items to excite customers. In 2022, McDonald’s Philippines also geared up for the Christmas season with new menu items that they wanted to use to drive purchase intent and ad recall amongst new and existing customers. The challenge was, how would they stand out from competitors employing the same tactic?
The Solution
With Christmas on the horizon, McDonald’s worked with GrabAds to launch their “O Christmas Treats” campaign targeting users within deliverable distance of their restaurants.
To tap into their festive spirit, existing customers were served holiday-themed ads featuring the limited-time Christmas-treats. Already familiar with the brand, they were more likely to resonate with the new additions to the menu compared to customers who haven’t ordered from McDonald’s before.
New customers were served a special offer to tempt them into sampling McDonald’s perennial favourite, the popular Double Cheeseburger.
To drive ad recall, customers saw these cheery visuals at every point within their in-app journey: from the moment they opened the app, browsed food options to when they waited for their food to arrive. Automatic placements were used to let the GrabAds platform determine where in the app to show the ads that would get the best campaign results.
The GrabAds team also commissioned a brand-lift study to determine the campaign’s impact on ad recall.
The Results
The campaign delivered over 16 million impressions, 3.8 million unique reach, 2.09% CTR, 7.4% unique conversion rate with an ROAS of 24.36x. A brand-lift study was also conducted by Kantar and it showed a 7% uplift in ad recall amongst total consumers. A more significant uplift of 10% was seen in consumers above 25 years old, which is 1.7x higher than Kantar’s norms. This shows a shift in behaviour for an age group that otherwise would have formed stronger brand-loyalty, making it harder to change their behaviour.
Overall, the Christmas campaign delivered both a healthy return on ad spend and significant uplift in ad recall, especially amongst a tougher-to-persuade audience segment of above 25-year-olds.
