For the last few years, McDonald’s and its agency The Marketing Store have been fine-tuning the chain’s wildly successful October “’Monopoly at McDonald’s” promotion to increase player engagement, making changes that built play frequency. In 2007 the big tweak involved elevating the visibility of the Web version of the game, since research showed that customers who played the game online revisited the stores more often than average.
McDonald’s approached the 2008 version of Monopoly at McDonald’s with a few strategic aims. As has been the case since the game started 18 years ago, the overarching intent was driving in-store sales and beating sales records for previous runs of the promotion.
But this year, McDonald’s and its agency took on another challenge, and with it, another marketing channel. The company wanted to use the game to boost purchases among young adults 18-24. Along with moms, these young adults comprise McDonald’s target adult markets. But research showed that both moms and teens were playing the collect-and-save game and making more frequent visits specifically to acquire real or virtual game pieces, young adults were more apt to play the instant-win version of the game and were not increasing their frequency.
This dampened the promotion’s branding effect, since attitudinal studies found that consumers who played the collect-and-save game felt more engaged than those who simply peeled off stickers to discover if they were instant winners.
The peel-off game needed to continue to keep infrequent customers engaged. But McDonald’s and The Marketing Store went looking for a way to make more of those instant-win players start playing the collection game.
To do that, the chain added a text-to-win component to the peel-off game pieces on its packaging and turning its instant-win game into a collect-and-win. Users could text an access code on the stamps to a short code and get a random roll of the virtual dice and a PIN number. They were then encouraged to go to www.PlayatMcD.com, enter the PIN and add the property they’d won in the mobile game to their online holdings.
The Marketing Store contracted with the SMS platform provider that handles voting for “American Idol” to support the text function—more complex than for “Idol,” since “Monopoly at McDonald’s” players could use any major U.S. wireless carrier, not just AT&T. Game administrators also had to integrate the game pieces won through those texted codes with the properties the players already owned online and make sure those winnings were added to the proper player accounts. Text users could submit up to 10 text codes a day.
Bridging the mobile and online games proved an immediate success; 20% of the codes entered online the first day of the game came from the mobile channel, with 18-24s the most prevalent mobile player group. Increased engagement also brought increased frequency and stronger branding: MobileOnline players made 2.07 store visits compared to 1.27 for instant-win only players, and 33% termed McDonald’s “a brand I love” compared to 14% of instant-win-only entrants. And sales during Monopoly month were up 5.3% over last year.
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