McDonald's has always done their best to keep prices low. So, when they raise their prices, you know inflationary pressure is high, which was what happened at the end of 2022.

As the cost of food increased, there was a noticeable increase in nostalgia for McDonald's old prices, this was particularly evident in their own social media channels. Luckily, there's a place where McDonald's good old deals are immortalized - on outdoor ads inside Google Street View.

To understand their customers McDonald's needs to get more users to their app. Giving them insight into customer purchase behavior and spending habits to enhance customer loyalty. So, the main objective was to increase app downloads by 20,000. Main target group was people aged 18-30. Secondary target group: Everyone interested in

Deals Stuck in Time is an example of how a campaign, with a modern take on the outdoor media, can engage people to the point where they digitally revisit old outdoor ads and claim over 32.000, sometimes 14-year-old, deals.

We had over 840,000 participants on our campaign website, www.dealsstuckintime.se, and the campaign generated over 23,000 new app downloads. Meaning that we reached the client's main objective. And during the campaign McDonald's active app users, those who actively use the app at least once a week, also increased by a whopping +25%.

Not only did we re-activate over a decade of old outdoor investments, the campaign itself generated over 13 million impressions. We think our untraditional approach on the outdoor media played a big role in that, since it enabled people to claim McDonald's old prices in a new way, in a time when great deals were most needed.

Inflation becomes extra relevant in people's lives when food prices are raised. Not getting as much food in the shopping basket, for the same money as you usually do, is something that people quickly react to. In Sweden, as in many other countries, McDonald's is famous for their reliability to offer good prices on their food.

In mid-2022, Google Maps added a time travel feature to their app, allowing users to revisit locations throughout history in Street View – directly on their phone. This feature was previously exclusive to desktop devices. This gave us an opportunity, because ever since Google started taking photos of Sweden's streets in 2009, our old deals have been stuck in the Google Street View. And they have been there ever since, protected from inflation. And McDonalds has done a lot of outdoor advertising over the years in Sweden.

This context gave us a chance to reactivate over a decade of invested outdoor campaigns, in the context of a rising inflation that affected a lot of Swedes on a daily basis.

The idea was also launched at a time when mainstream popular culture is characterized by different types of multiverses, where mainstream entertainment play with the idea of moving in time and space. An example is Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Deals Stuck in Time combines traditional outdoor advertising with today's technology. When we realized that many of McDonald's outdoor campaigns from the past 14 years were captured in Google Street View, we found a way to reactivate all these offers.

We located old deals that have been capture by Google over the years, bought the same exact billboards and turned them into time portals to the old deals in Google Street View. In the campaign our ads only had one simple message: “There’s a great deal here, if you go back in time.”, and a QR code.

By scanning a QR code on the outdoor ad, Google maps popped up and you saw the old deal through Street View – at the very same location. This weblink then functioned as a voucher code on our campaign site, leading you directly to the McDonald’s app where you could claim the deal.