Using data and social listening, we discovered that there was an interesting conversation around our fast food chain’s Coke. In fact, if you Google “that place where Coke tastes SO good,” you find page after page of articles explaining why the Coke tastes so good at our fast food chain. It was already a conversation in pop culture – all we had to do was shine the light on it.

We thought the best way to do this was to take the brand entirely out of the conversation with a first-of-its-kind unbranded integrated campaign. By never mentioning the brand, we were able to tap into second-screen curiosity, driving consumers to perform the search for “that place where Coke tastes SO good.” There’s nothing better than a third-party endorsement and there’s no bigger third-party endorsement than a Google organic search.

On April 11, 2017, we launched the “Search” campaign through a YouTube mobile masthead placement that drove consumers directly to the search results page for “that place where Coke tastes SO good.” Later that evening, during primetime television viewing hours, we began to seed the first television commercial. Throughout that first week, we released several additional television spots on broadcast, online video and a unique YouTube channel. We used the first week of the campaign to introduce people to the conversation already happening online around Coke at McDonald’s. And in the two weeks that followed, once everyone was in on the joke, we had the rare luxury of continuing to push our $1 Coke message by referencing our own campaign and continuing to be part of topical conversations. Throughout the three-week campaign period we also launched a series of banner ads, radio, print and social to accompany the video work.

• Nielsen Study Trial for “$1 any size” soft drinks was the highest of all previous campaigns (Source: Nielsen)

• In the first two weeks, the campaign drove an 18,400% increase in search intent (Source: Google Trends)

• There were 411,166,83 unique visits per month in earned media (Source: Muckrack)

• There were 61 articles published about the campaign (Source: Muckrack)

• We attracted 2,055 organic social campaign mentions on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook (does not include McDonald's or Mindy Kaling posts). (Source: Sprinklr)

• Our total paid social impressions were over 275.8M (Source: Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram)

• YouTube masthead impressions: 274M (Source: YouTube)

• Total views for all “Search” campaign content – “Pixelated,” “That Place,” “Secret Identity,” “Beverage Technician,” “Search,” “Cancelled”: 4.2M (Source: YouTube)

In an age of shortened attention spans and skeptical consumers, how do you get people to engage with your brand over something as trivial as $1 Cokes? By creating a completely unbranded campaign, designed to capitalize on a conversation already happening online, we were able to take advantage of the second-screen phenomenon and drive consumers to a list of organic results for “that place where Coke tastes SO good.”

We knew we weren’t going to win the consumer over with value alone. We needed to find the right fan. So we focused an audience called “Sip Savers Who Savor” – those people who can’t pass up a good deal, but will never compromise taste.

Through social listening and Google search query data, we learned that “Sip Savers Who Savor” are more than just budget-conscious Coke-sipping folks. Their love for the McDonald’s Coke was very real. Not only were these folks tweeting and posting about their love for Coke, they were Googling it!

These insights became the strategic and creative bedrock for the completely unbranded “Search” campaign, leveraging the social fandom for our Coke and driving curious Millennials to Google search it. We weren’t going to tell consumers we had the Coke that tastes so good, we were going to let the internet tell them.

McDonald’s has always been regarded as an iconic American hamburger brand – the largest hamburger fast food chain in the US. Yet very few consider McDonald’s a beverage destination. This spring, McDonald’s sought to change that. In April, McDonald’s ran its first national “$1 any size” soft drink campaign to bring guests back into restaurants.

Sales forecasts were ambitious, despite strong competition from convenience stores (7-Eleven, Speedway, Circle K, QuikTrip) and quick service restaurants (Sonic, Burger King, Wendy’s, Chick-fil-A, Carl’s Jr.) that have consistently run national beverage promotions at competitive price points (often for less than $1). And while this was a value promotion, 28% of current customers were purchasing their drinks elsewhere because they felt they could get a better deal (Source: TCCC – Mind Gap Study, August 2014). With lack of loyalty and no equity in the beverage promotional space, we needed to tackle this issue differently.