When you’re McDonald’s, you expect other restaurants to “draw inspiration” from your brand and products. In fact, it’s happened over a million times and by now we know exactly how to deal with it. But when Fashion icon Alexander Wang “draws inspiration” from your paper bag to launch his new handbag, that’s definitely a first. Our objective was to make sure our bag was the center of attention online.

How we dealt with it? The exact same way. We called him out and we served it as fast as we serve our food. On the same day, our paper bag was posted on the McDonald’s Saudi Arabia Instagram page, in the exact same style as Wang’s post. And of course, we tagged him in front of all his followers and ours, with a statement that says it all: @Alexaderwang, we did it first. Among his followers, were the fashion bloggers of the kingdom and the world, and we went out to directly target them.

Our target audience were:

1. our followers

2. Alexander Wang’s followers (So people that are interested in McDonald’s but also people that are interested in fashion)

3. Alexander Wang himself

4. The fashion bloggers and influencers Our approach was a very simple one.

We simply put things back into perspective for our 4 main target audiences by simply placing our bag in the same perspective as Wang’s and target all of them on the same platform he posted it on (instagram) which later travelled even out of it and went to fashion magazines and lifestyle magazines in Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, France, Brazil and even more.

Our strategy was based on how quick our retaliation was and how fast our response was. It took us just a day to spot Wang’s bag, come up with our campaign, create our post, and post it. And the way we art directed the post was to get the attention of the fashion community. One simple and small parody post then had the power to cross industries and categories from F&B to Fashion. It took on an international scale. We spent 2,827 dollars and gained back 1.73 million dollars of earned media… that’s 61,000% return on investment. The 2,827 dollars were spent directly targeting Wang’s followers on Instagram.

The come back of our paper bag made an impression! 1. Our post turned into a trend, picked up by fashion influencers and outlets. 2. McDonald’s was making fashion headlines and was among the top things trending in pop culture as a fashion icon. 3. The conversation around the bag was massive with social media engagement like never before on our channels. 4. Alexander Wang got inspired some more and went on to collaborate with McDonald’s to launch a whole collection called I’m Wangin’ it! You can read all about it on GQ:

https://www.gq.ru/style/sumka-awang#intcid=recommendations_default-similar2_09f712be-4ee5-43a8-9f6e-e2676536c01a_similar2-3_entityTopicSimilarity

And here are the numbers:

• 1.73 million dollars of earned media

• 349 + million impressions

• 10% increase in McDonald’s KSA followers

• 61,000% return on media investment