March 2020: Germany is in lockdown due to the Corona pandemic. An unprecedented situation, new to everyone: public life is paralyzed, businesses are mostly closed. The drastic restrictions in the restaurant business also hit McDonald's with full force: closed branches mean no guests, means zero sales.

The only bright spot: The drive-thru remains open! But just 22% of McDonald's customers know that the McDrive is an option. In addition, the dwindling confidence of Germans in the restaurant business in general is a major hurdle: more than 50% are afraid of catching the disease here.

With McDonald's business on the brink and a lack of sales comes a lack of budget for a large-scale awareness campaign that tells our target group "YES, we're open!" and "YES, we'll keep you safe!

However, it is precisely the large awareness media channels that are best suited for this multi-layered message.

The unprecedented situation forces us to focus a 100% on the target group that is most likely to return to McDonald's: Regular customers form an important basis for McDonald's business. Acquiring new customers, on the other hand, is unlikely in times of crisis and is therefore of secondary importance.

The first step was therefore to reactivate the base of regular customers that had been absent due to the lockdown. In other words, the first step was to target only regular customers who had a high probability of bringing more traffic back to the McDrive and boosting McDonald's sales.

But how does this fit together - the TV screen as currently the most suitable medium for awareness and trust and the targeted approach of existing customers? Through a little trick that brings together McDonald's regular customers, your home Wi-Fi, your connected TV (“Smart TV”) and streaming environments for the first time…

Step 1: Identify regular customers

Easy: Our app users are regular customers. But since not every regular customer has the app installed, we added respondents of our mobile campaigns around branches before lockdown. And those we identified as store visitors through their smartphones.

Step 2: Meaningfully scaling the potential…

…by adding internet users to whom we could assign a similarly high probability of visits - based on surfing behavior fitting the behaviour of regular customers.

Step 3: Address them when using the big screen

Here comes the magic: Whenever a target-group-smartphone (identified via their mobile advertising ID) and a connected TV were used in the same Wi-Fi at the same time, we could specifically address a regular customer on their TV screen. Our spot was then displayed in ad-financed streaming environments of major German TV channels: "YES, our McDrive is open!" and "YES, we care for your safety!"

After just two weeks, the campaign increased awareness by 50%, reaching 7.6 million unique viewers: 33% knew that McDrive is still open. A 27% higher ad recall (vs. all 2019 campaigns average) proves we delivered the right message through the right approach.

Confidence in McDonald's safety improved significantly: +55% general confidence in McDonald's and even +65% increased confidence in the safety of the food - top marks vs. our competition.

The campaign ensured that the visitor frequency at the McDrive increased significantly over the course of the lockdown, proven by research. In the last week of the lockdown (end of April), for example, we welcomed around 61% more guests to the McDrive than in the first week of the lockdown - and that with comparably lowest budget input!

And the campaign was also sustainable: the increase in visitors to the McDrive was maintained at the same high level throughout May.