Our idea was to make young people travel back to the first day of McDonald’s and experience this moment. Using the iconic photo of the line at the opening we created ScanPoster – an interactive poster that let you look deep into a picture to reveal real stories using Messenger chatbots. We found people who were in that line and asked them a few questions. Based on their stories we created 27 Facebook Messenger bots and put their codes on the photo of the legendary line. You could scan each code to start a chat with a person from the line. You could hear what people were talking about, see the pictures they took, see the money people used and reveal many stories behind the picture.

For the execution of the poster we took an archive picture of the line at the opening of the first McDonald’s in Moscow on the 31.01.1990. We found and interviewed people who were in the line on that day. Based on their answers we created 27 Facebook Messenger bots – each of them unique just like these people stories. We put the codes of the bots at the archive photo, placing them on people, signs, snow, and other different object that could tell something about that day. On the 31.01.2017 this poster was displayed at that same McDonald’s.

500 000 bot activations

Over 1 400 000 messages sent by bots

3,5 minutes – average time spent

ScanPoster managed to change young people’s perception of McDonald’s. Now they could understand the thrill of their parents standing in that line to walk into the restaurant that was the first of its kind in Soviet Russia.