While other brands are spending billions to be integrated into gaming titles, one brand is so iconic that its menu has been mimicked in hundreds of video games.

Any gamer will agree : food in video games look utterly familiar. Fries in red boxes, double-decked burgers, golden nuggets, and so on. All unbranded, but all waiting to be claimed.

To stake our claim on this unbranded menu, McDonald’s collaborated with the country’s biggest gaming influencers to rally the gaming community to screengrab virtual grub from ANY GAME, brand them McDonald’s and redeem corresponding McDelivery coupons IRL.

We enlisted the Philippines’ top gamers to initiate the hunt for the McDonald’s food-alikes –– screengrabbing and branding them #ThisIsMcDonalds on their social pages. Knowing that McDonald’s look-alikes were present in ALL kinds of games, we carefully selected and distributed our co-collaborators to reach as many gaming multiverses as there are - PC, mobile, and all kinds of console games.

Before long, top gamers and their legions of hungry fans were sharing screengrabs of virtual food that – despite being logo-free – were essentially unofficial replicas of McDonald’s menu items. With each screen grab shared, gamers made the look-alikes officially McDonald’s.

McDonald’s kept close watch, intercepting the screengrabs on influencers’ socials and engaging with bespoke responses in real time. Gamers received coupons equivalent to

their “screengrub” so they could have food delivered IRL for free.

While other brands negotiated with one publisher at a time, this cross-gaming hunt effectively tagged McDonald’s grub in over 350 different gaming titles, boosting not only brand engagement but also McDelivery sales.