Rationale for McDonald’s – Student Project
It’s the Small Things That Matter
Short summary of the brief:
In this project, McDonalds wants to shift focus to attract users between the age of 18-25 with a key message being that McDonalds is a place for friends to; meet, catch up and share life. The methodology used to attract this specific target audience was a blog content which offer brands a chance to draw consumers in with published content (Xen Systems, 2020), a video content as it is the one leading choice of consumers (HubSpot, 2022) and three different social media platforms – Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok – to reach this target audience.
Overall concept
Objective Goal (SMART)
Social Media Platforms – Snapchat, TikTok and Instagram (RACE)
Content is king!
The content marketing matrix (Smart Insights, 2022) helps the brand comprehend what their marketing goal is. Throughout my content creation project, my focus was to inspire the McDonalds community, entertain the audience to keep them engaged and educated.
Reach involves the 18–25-year-olds being aware of the brands services, for instance the fact that McDonalds offers student discount. This would drive traffic on the McDonalds app. It involves maximizing reach overtime to create multiple interactions using different paid, owned and earned media touchpoints.
Act is short for Interact. It encourages interactions on social media to generate leads. It's about persuading site visitors or prospects to take the next step, the next Action on their journey when they initially reach your social network presence.
For instance, the Snapchat design post has been designed to be interactive with the QR code. The use of colours red and yellow are colours familiar with the audience when it comes to McDonald’s and is used consistently thought out each social media posts. A technique I adapted is the use of symmetry and order with the Instagram and snapchat post. (Garg, 2019). When researching other techniques, Garg (2019) stated that proximity is also an important element which I adapted on my snapchat post as the audience should perceive that, if they tap onto the QR code their options are the three products underneath.
Converting involves getting your audience to take that vital next step which turns them into paying customers whether the payment is taken through online by downloading the McDonald’s app - Ecommerce transactions or through offline channels.
Engage is a long-term engagement that is, developing a long-term relationship with first-time buyers to build customer loyalty as repeat purchases using communications on your site, social presence, email and direct interactions to boost customer lifetime value. One of the objective goals I came up with for McDonald’s is to have over 500 comments on every Instagram post uploaded (Instagram, 2022).
Blog Content – Owned Media, AIDA
Storytelling has the power to connect with the desired audience. Essentially, with the McDonald’s blog my purpose was to bring back memories for the audience so that they could understand the impact McDonald’s experiences has had on them. This highlights consumers’ loyalty and clearly conveys the value of the product.
Blog content is a good marketing tool to give deeper insight to an audience. They are usually easier to understand, can be less formal depending on your brands target audience and is used to deliver the brand message to consumers under the brands own terms. Blogs are an example of owned media which refers to any channel or profile that is owned, controlled and maintained by the brand itself. The benefit of owned media is the brand's ability to control it. When the brand owns the media channel, it decides what type of content to publish, how often it will be updated and how users can interact with it
Attention
Writing an introduction that captures your audience can help your website traffic (and ultimately, your business) grow better (Hubspot, 2021). I’ve started my introduction with “Let’s take a trip down memory lane”. I kept it short and simple to allure the reader in.
Interest/Desire
I Gain interest by writing about a topic which is sentimental and relatable as I went through the same experiences as the focus target audience. The tags/Hashtags I have added to the blog and Instagram post would drive SEO to be higher up on Google’s algorithm so that when people search for these key words then the McDonalds website will be close to the top of the search page. I have inserted hyperlinks to other blogs that are specifically inserted to attract the consumer to do further reading that may be more specific to just McDonald’s interior or videos which consumers would interact with more and share with friends with the #MeaningfulMomentsMatter
Action:
Call to action is to get the customers to visit other blogs, visit the app or visit social media sights, and engage with the platforms.
Video Content - User generated and earned media
More than 500 million hours of content on YouTube is consumed every day (Watts, 2020) and nearly 50% of all videos watched are on mobile devices (as written in my blog 95% of customers now use smartphones). As McDonalds are aiming towards 18–25-year-olds then my video content consists of influencers that has collaborated with McDonald’s to produce content. The aim was to drive earned media as it was based in another country (Spain, Marbella) but still portrayed McDonald’s brand which is to “make delicious feel-good moments easy for everyone”. Naturally, within the video a review was formed pushing user generation.
In my blog and TikTok post, I referred to culture because it is significant for brands to create a long-term relation with their customers. To bring my project together I showed how the culture of McDonalds is still similar in other countries as they adapt to their consumers needs. In today’s generation authenticity is a concern (Consumer Behaviour, 2019) as consumers are more likely to engage or purchase a brands product if they trust the brand.
Reference:
Bailey, C. (n.d.). An Overview of Paid, Earned and Owned Media (2020). [online] www.xen.com.au. Available at: https://www.xen.com.au/blog/overview-paid-earned-owned-media
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Collins, A. and Conley, M. (2022). The Ultimate Guide to Video Marketing. [Online] Hubspot.com. Available at: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/video-marketing
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Garg, C. (2020) ‘Principles of Design: Visual Perception and Gestalism UX Collective. 2 August, 2010. Available at: https://charchitgarg27.medium.com/principles-of-design-visual-perception-and-gestaltism-2b0c4206834a
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Russ, H. (2021). McDonald’s creates new unit to focus on global digital app. [Online] Reuters.com. Available at: https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/mcdonalds-creates-new-unit-focus-global-digital-app-2021-07-26/
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Roderick, L. (2017). McDonald’s on the next stage of its digital transformation. [online] Marketing Week. Available at: https://www.marketingweek.com/mcdonalds-mobile-ordering-app/
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Smart Insights (2022) Content Marketing Strategy [Online]. Available at: https://www.smartinsights.com/content-management/content-marketing-strategy/
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Watts24fps (2020). YouTube: How Important is video content for marketing 2020? Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BA8yOWsWzeU&t=41s
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