Chicken is the fastest growing protein in the Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) industry. Macca’s wanted to grow their share of chicken 3% by launching a new chicken menu. Macca’s are famous for many things. Chicken is not one them.

Our challenge - Make Macca’s famous for chicken.

Macca’s have spent the last 50 years being famous for beef, so when people are craving chicken they don’t think of Macca’s, they think of KFC. We needed to become famous for Chicken…fast!

To hit aggressive sales targets, we needed to bring new customers into the restaurant and steal share from our competitors. Our new Chicken menu tested phenomenally, so we knew it would ‘fly’ if we could simply divert consumers from their default chicken fix to try our new Macca’s menu.

However, we weren’t really on the chicken consideration list, and our competitor outspent us by 330% in the chicken segment.

Our greatest opportunity was to target switchers (60% of the category), en-masse, by dialling up taste. Research revealed we needed to actively engage Gen Z, our fiercest critics when it came to chicken quality perceptions.

It wasn’t enough to explain The Macca’s Chicken Effect, we needed to dramatize it in a major way and at scale. We utilised, celebrities, broadcasters, sports commentators, morning talk show hosts, reality show contestants, editors, radio presenters and social media influencers all in their own chosen format.

The Macca’s Chicken Effect was about infiltrating content, in-program segments, stages and sets to demonstrate what happens when our talent succumbed to The Macca’s Chicken Effect, a force so powerful it was to the detriment of their day jobs!

We identified key partners who were industry leaders across the biggest cultural platforms; 'tricking’ their audience into thinking they had snuck off to Macca's for the new Chicken menu.

Executed with unparalleled scale and stature, coming to life in a disruptive way spanning social influencers, National News, to the biggest sports events and programming of the year, across the over the country!

We took over major newspapers in Australia “Sorry there is no front page today – we’re at Macca’s” making it literally the biggest news of the day.

We disrupted airwaves throughout Australia partnering with major radio stations across Australia, getting radio hosts to ‘trick’ their audience into thinking that they had skipped out on an interview with the Prime Minister of Australia, because he had to get to Macca’s (even asking if the PM wanted anything).

Finally we disrupted the biggest Aussie cultural events of the year, the footy finals, crossing back to the commentary team to find the studio empty –a stunned director lamenting “they said they’ve gone to Macca’s to try the new chicken menu…”

The Macca’s Chicken Effect was a cracking success in every measurable way possible.

We exceeded our aggressive sales target by 25%, growing our market share of chicken by 5% (66% higher than our target).

We successfully made Macca’s famous for Chicken by disrupting the Australian Media landscape, reaching 90% of Aussies in the biggest cultural events in Australia. Our unconventional approached delivered $4.2M in incremental media value (+90% above and beyond our investment).

This impact and coverage achieved a massive 84% awareness of our new chicken menu, resulting in 70% purchase intent , enabling us to successfully steal 60% of our competitors’ customers with our new chicken menu.

Furthermore, we convinced our sceptical Gen Z audience to re-appraise Macca’s chicken with almost 50% actually purchasing our new range (two times higher than our target) and grew our brand love by +5 points (making Macca’s their favourite QSR brand).