The Extended Hours campaign was one of McDonald’s great successes of 2011. Over the campaign period traffic to the McDonald’s mobile store finder site saw a 220% uplift - over 530,000 additional visits, which is 10% of our night owl audience. Most importantly it made a huge difference to sales. McDonald’s Extended Hours stores saw a +2.5% uplift in sales between the hours of 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.

Central to our solution was the creation of a restaurant finder smartphone application, allowing our night owls to find their nearest open restaurant when hunger called. We used media to drive people through to this app.

To make the communication totally relevant to consumers we were specific about our targeting of geography and time of day. The right message, in the right place, at the right time to stimulate immediate action.Mobile display banners were served to Smartphones on sites we knew our target would be browsing, in locations which pinpointed them as being in proximity to an Extended Hours restaurant.

Further activity got into people’s nighttime routine:•Sponsorship of late night radio broadcasts•Advertising on cash point screens between 11pm-7am•QR codes on receipts distributed from cash points, and McDonald’s own tills•Backlit posters in walking proximity to open stores•Petrol pump nozzles in driving proximity to open stores

An emerging 24 hour economy means there are now 2m people out and about between the hours of 11pm and 7am each week (IPA Touchpoints). In response to this, McDonald’s has extended the opening hours of a third of its restaurants, offering 24 hour opening for all or part of the week. Our brief was simple - get these night owls to visit McDonald’s. But with the majority of restaurants still closing at 11pm we needed a much smarter approach than going broadcast. It was essential that we avoided driving potential business towards a locked door.

McDonald’s night-time business is dominated by people travelling or working. These people 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.