McDonald’s has extended its opening hours to 24 hours in one third of its stores. Our task was to drive awareness and nighttime footfall, but with most restaurants still closing at 11pm, it was essential that we avoided driving potential business towards a locked door.

More than half of McDonald’s business between 11pm and 7am is from people travelling or working. These night owls are habitual creatures, their travels punctuated with routine cash point visits, petrol stops and use of their smartphones.

Our strategy was to disrupt their nightly rituals and direct people to participating restaurants. Communication, therefore, had to be time and place specific. So we created a restaurant finder smartphone application, allowing our target to find their nearest open restaurant at any time of day. Using this as a call to action we were able to maximise the business opportunity specifically for late night restaurants.All media used to drive people through to the app offered a combination of geographical and time-of-day targeting to maximise the relevance of our message. Through IPA Touchpoints analysis we identified the most efficient media channels to deliver this:•Late night radio sponsorship. Trails and DJ live reads encouraged listeners to download the smartphone application.•ATM screens daypart targeted to 11pm-7am were used in proximity to our late night restaurants.•QR codes on receipts distributed from ATMs and McDonald’s tills.•Backlit posters, proximity targeted to walking distance of restaurants.•Petrol pump nozzles, proximity targeted to driving distance of restaurants.Mobile display played a critical role in delivering this approach. Banners were served to Smartphones on sites we knew our audience would be browsing, such as news, travel, sport, music and social networking. These ads were served to consumers when they were in proximity to restaurants, using a geo-fence set up around each of McDonald’s 1,200 restaurants.Placing the mobile app at the heart of our media approach ensured the Extended Hours campaign was one of McDonald’s great successes of 2011. The restaurant finder was used by 10% of all night owls, an average of two times over the campaign period: over 530,000 visits.

Most importantly, it made a huge difference to sales. McDonald’s Extended Hours stores saw a +2.5% uplift in sales between 11pm and 7am, delivering an ROI of 2:1. A considerable achievement on a tight budget of £441k: less than 1% of McDonald’s annual spend.