SnapChat can be a challenge to marketeers as the snap disappear for good after 10 seconds. But for McDonalds we managed to turn this into an advantage when we relaunched their Smoothies. Not only did we talk directly to the millennials on their mobile phone, we also created a coupon that could only be opened inside the McDonalds restaurant.

McDonald’s do a lot of mobile promotions. And the challenge is always the same: Since mobile is… well mobile… people tend to participate far away from the restaurants - and then forget all about it afterwards. We needed a way to get them into the restaurant - and the answer was Snapchat.

Through an online and offline campaign we asked the target group to befriend us on Snapchat. Every day we sent our friends a new snap, which possibly contained a coupon for a free smoothie, basically turning the snaps into lottery tickets. We called the activation SnapChance. However, there was a slight catch: Since snaps disappear once they are opened – our fans had to wait to open and check their lottery snaps until they were first in line at the cash register at McDonald's. No snap - no smoothie.

The result was obvious. The lucky ones got their Smoothies, and the not so lucky ones… well of most of them bought smoothies anyway since they’d already gone to McDonald’s and waited in line to get one.

During four weeks, 2700 of the 5000 coupons were redeemed. We sent out 27.000 snaps with 22.000 of these being viewed. What these 22.000 unique impressions were worth in terms of media value is hard to determine, but it is safe to say it had a huge impact as the sales; Actual sales went up with 40.6 % proving that pulling people into the restaurants was a very smart move.

Most people would associate Smoothies with summer, but even in winter season Smoothies are now one of the most popular items on the menu at McDonald's Norway.