The best Counter-Strike team in the world right now is Danish and the Danish TV stations are beginning to broadcast some of the big esport events.

Therefore, McDonald’s had a great window of opportunity to give a public high five to the gaming community by speaking to them in the community’s own language and making some fun at the same time.

The objectives of the campaign were to connect McDonalds’s with a hard-to-reach target audience, gamers, and get them to talk about the initiative.

McDonald’s in Denmark wanted to strengthen their relationship with gamers. Therefore, we created simple targeted ads (billboards, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and inside games) where we named McDonald’s products with the equivalent in gaming lingo. A cheeseburger was called “eco round” which means economic round, where players save money. A Happy Meal was called “noob” which means “beginner” etc.

Words and expressions that only gamers understood, which made the idea talk of town in the community.

The objectives of the campaign were to connect with a hard-to-reach target audience: gamers and get them to talk about our initiative. In most parts of the world it is frowned upon to play video games – it is stigmatized and ‘nerdy’.

The best Counter-strike team in the world right now is Danish and the Danish TV stations are beginning to broadcast some of the big esport events. Even the Danish prime minister went to the Danish event Blast Pro Series, celebrating esport as a real sport in his opening speech.

Therefore, McDonald’s had a great window of opportunity to give a public high five to the

gaming community by speaking to them in their own language and making some fun at the same time. Because nobody else understood the ads. And that was probably also why the ads got so much attention.

A week prior to the biggest esport event in the country (Blast Pro Series), we launched the

campaign on different media: traditional and digital billboards on metro stations close to the venue, Royal Arena, where the event took place. Social media: Facebook and Instagram, targeting gamers and people geographically close to the event. Furthermore, we launched digital billboards on Counter-Strike servers, so gamers could watch the ads inside the game.

Outdoor was aired for one week while the digital executions ran for a few weeks more.

The total media spend was less than €10.000. (Outdoor costs <€7000, SoMe costs <€2000 and in-game ads costs <€500)

The campaign went viral and was picked up by media in 18 countries with more than 110,000,000 potential impressions. The media wrote about it, the biggest CS-analysts, influencers and hosts tweeted about it, and it was the most upvoted post on Reddit in the past year (Counter-Strike subreddit 1 Feb 2019). Fans photoshopped translations on photos for the Russian fanbase and other brands made 'spoofs' with the same words on their products.

When a big brand like McDonald's gives credit to a community that is misunderstood, it creates talk of town. Both inside the gaming community as well as outside – and has a positive impact for both them and McDonald's.