McDonald's Sweden has 400 000 visits every day. However, there are many guests that McDonald’s doesn’t know anything about. To understand their customers better McDonald's need more users to get their app. Giving them insight into customer purchase behavior and spending habits to enhance customer loyalty.

But compelling people to download yet another app from a brand is a challenge, and 80% of Swedes find ads annoying, including one of McDonald's key demographic: 16 to 24-year-olds.

Based on the above, McDonald's gave us a brief to do an engaging campaign to increase the number of app users. More specifically, the objective was to increase the number of app downloads by 20,000 people, increase the number of active users and do so in a way that created earned media attention for the brand.

McDonald's has always done their best to keep prices low. So when they raise their prices, you know inflationary pressure is high, which was what happened at the end of 2022.

Fortunately, McDonald's old deals can still be found on Google Street View. In mid-2022, Google Maps Sweden updated its mobile app, making it possible to revisit locations throughout history – directly from your mobile phone.

We found as many of McDonald's old outdoor ads that we could in Street View, and advertised our campaign on the exact same billboards. By scanning the QR code on the ads, people were sent to that ad but in Street View - where the old deal still exists. Using their phone, anyone who interacted with our billboards could get McDonald's burgers at a 2009 price with just a few taps. That's how we turned yesterday’s offers into today’s greatest deals.

We tapped into the fact that today, people live their lives in a constant and seamless integration between their phone and the physical world. To promote app downloads, user engagement, and media attention, we integrated the physical and digital worlds by combining old McDonald's deals in outdoor ads, peoples mobile phones and Google Street View's time travel feature.

And with the big ongoing pop cultural trend of Multiverses we saw this approach as something that appeals to McDonald's younger target group, 16 to 24-year-olds.

So with Deal Stuck in Time we created a seamless experience between the physical and digital world, as well as linking our current campaign with McDonald's old ones. With this strategic approach we elevated a simple outdoor campaign into a unique brand experience, re-activating over a decade of McDonald's media investments in the process.

We identified old deals on street view, bought the same ad spaces and connected the present ad to the old ad with a QR code. When scanned, you were shown the old ad, and could copy the link to that specific Google location. That link was pasted on our campaign site and you were given a voucher directly in the McDonald's app for the old deal you had found. To claim the deals, you needed the app.

One big challenge was organizing the media purchase and ensuring that each physical unit got placed on the correct outdoor billboard as it had been when the original deal was advertised (since the media placements were crucial for the campaign).

To maximize reach, we launched an integrated campaign across outdoor ads, film, social media, radio, and influencers, with a cohesive message pointing to the outdoor ads as the main activation.

With Deals Stuck in Time, McDonald's managed to create a lot of earned media attention and get more people to engage with the brand. As many as 840 000 Swedes decided to travel back in time and get involved in the campaign at our website dealsstuckintime.se. This resulted in over 32 000 deals being found and used, while the campaign itself created great interest among people and generated more than 13 million impressions – in a country of 10 million people.

Most importantly, the campaign resulted in more than 23,000 Swedes downloading the McDonald's app during the campaign period (+3,000 more than objective). In addition, McDonald's active users (those who actively use the app at least once a week) increased by a whopping +25%, from 167,000 to 210,000 people. That’s 20,000 more active app users versus objective.