Impactful creativity and real time response made the brand beloved in the Philippines
By Nicai de Guzman
For a big brand such as McDonald’s, creating campaigns becomes a challenge each and every time. With many people engaging with their brand constantly, they have to respond in a sensitive manner and in real time.
This is what Margot Torres, EVP & Deputy Managing Director, McDonald’s Philippines, Raoul Panes, CCO of Leo Burnett Manila and Publicis One Philippines, and Joel Limchoc, Director of Film Pabrika Inc. discussed during the 4th adobo Festival of Ideas: “Creativity at the heart of Digital: Data, Tech, & AI.”
Together, they discussed the 4 C’s that have guided them in creating content for McDonald’s – conversation, context, collaboration, and confluence.
Conversation
Torres said that all of their campaigns and content creation starts with conversation.
“This conversation is between your brand and your consumer. And the conversation starts with listening,” she said.
For this, they use social listening tools where they find opportunities, insights, and ideas.
“But for you to really strike a big one, it must start with knowing your brand. If you do not know what your brand stands for, you will be overwhelmed with what your brand stands for in the social space. But if you’re clear about your brand then you know which conversations you must respond to,” Torres said.
By listening consistently to your customers, you can be agile in content creation. When you see something trending, jump on it, suggested Torres. An example is when Twitter doubled their writing space to 280 characters, McDonald’s used it right away. When the song PPAP trended, they used it right away to create a meme that promotes their apple pie. When Miss France won Miss Universe in 2017, they also created a post promoting their famous French fries.
“It’s not always a positive conversation about your brand but if you remain authemtic and maybe not take yourself too seriously, you can respond with the right creative approach,” Torres said.
She was referring to an incident when a McDonald’s poster came out that people made fun of. It was supposed to promote Chicken McSavers, with Maine Mendoza and Alden Richards as endorsers. Mendoza was supposed to be holding the fork but it was photoshopped incorrectly and the fork appeared to be floating.
McDonald’s responded right away and turned it into a GIF game. They posted it in their Facebook and Twitter and asked their fans to click on the GIF to stop the fork in front of Mendoza’s hand. People’s reactions immediately changed. The post ranked garnered 11,402 likes, 2,107 shares on Facebook and 1,513 likes and 902 retweets on Twitter. A total of 60,206 attempts were also made to catch the fork. People applauded McDo’s agile response.
Context
Context is also important, according to Panes. He said that when they start on a campaign, they ask several questions.
“We ask what is our story, we also ask how will you tell your story. That’s important that’s where the creatives and execution comes in. the other one is when will yur story come out, the timing. These are all things we consider when we conceptualize creatives,” Panes said.
The principle he and his team lives by is don’t be epal or in your face. He mentioned that politicians in the Philippines who always plaster their faces on posters.
Panes said to be very considerate of your audience because your ad is competing with so many content such as pet clips, real and fake news, videos.
“Your brand content competes with the real world of your audience. They’re not just hooked with their gadgets, they’re leading real lives. You need to be very sensitive about these things you need to look into what you’re saying as well,” he said.
One of the occasions when their sensitivity was tested was during All Soul’s Day. They noticed that peole were having their deliveries brought to cemeteries. This posed a problem with their delivery personnel who were given vague instructions like, “Meet us at the this crypt or near the cross.”
The solution they came up with was the Mcdelivery Pin – a huge pin sign on cemeteries that can serve as an easy meet up spot for those who had food delivered in cemeteries during All Souls’ Day. It addressed a human problem with a creative solution.
Aside from being sensitive, Panes suggested to be unpredictable.
“If you’re a marketer and you do the same things over and over again, you become an easy target for your competitors,” he said.
The example he gave was how they came up with the commercial for the new burger McDo. It actually came from the story of one of their copywriters who couldn’t go back to the same place where she and her boyfriend broke up. It was the inspiration for the widely popular commercial of McDonald’s for their burger, which used the song “Tuloy Pa Rin.”
It was so popular that they even did a sequel. While most sequels don’t work, they decided to put in a twist – they created an ad using the point of view of the boyfriend.
For Mother’s Day, instead of the usual thanking mothers or giving tribute to them, they came up with a campaign #LoveKitaMa. They encouraged netizens to declare their love by giving a public apology with branded greeting cards. The campaign garnered 1.4 million interaction in five days, 122,000+ shares and retweets, most shared branded content in mother’s day 46.5 million netizens reach and +17 points brand score.
And for Father’s Day, they came up with something different again.
“For Father’s Day, we thought that everybody’s doing videos for mother’s day, but do we make videos for fathers? But for that you need to be engaging. Don’t do what everybody is doing,” Panes said.
Limchoc, who directed the video, said that they celebrated an overlooked thing that dads do all the tie, which is waiting.
“We want to show that Pinoy behavior. The whole spot the quiet moment of you see the waiting time of the dad, it’s like worth the wait every time they see their kid’s faces,” Limchoc said.
For Christmas, since they knew everyone was doing heartwarming or tearful Christmas films, they tapped into an insights which came from one of our trainees in the office who talked about the hardship of being single during Christmas.
“We felt that it was a very important insight and we didn’t want to do another weepy story. We wanted to make it fun,” Panes said.
For his part, Limchoc added a motion graphics so the video can appeal to Gen Z and Millennials. They also used the song “Jingle Bells” and changed it to “Single Bells” to show the fun side of being single during the yuletide season.
Collaboration
In creating content, collaboration is also key. In 2015, McDonald’s had a campaign that involved other markets around the world. On March 24, cities all over the world showed the scale of McDonalds through a movie.
For Manila, they thought it was a good opportunity to promote drive through and breakfast menu. For this, they set up a McToll Booth in the South Luzon Express Way and North Luzon Express Way.
Limchaco was tasked to capture the day and turn it into a video. He had to produce and edit it within 24 hours so they could upload it the same day. He said that it was a logistical nightmare. They had 20 cameras and they had to create a traffic system such as where to bring the food, where to station the people to capture the moment, etc.
“For that three-hour shoot, we had 20 hours of footage and we had to upload the video on the same day. But I always tell my staff, nothing great comes easy,” Joel said.
For that campaign, among the 24 cities that participated, only four countries were recognized and praised by the global office. These countries were Vietnam, Italy, Brazil, and of course, the Philippines.
Confluence
It happens when all the 3 C’s work together from conversation to context to collaboration, Torres said. The perfect example of this is the Sharon Cuneta and Gabby Concepcion commercial that went viral. Torres said that it wasn’t actually a Valentines Day campaign but a promotion of the French fries and Chicken McDo pairing.
The idea was to bring a classic love team to represent the pairing and among their many choices, Sharon or Gabby was always on top of the list.
“We always wanted the video to be simple and short and wanting the audience to look for some more as opposed to making it dragging,” Limchaco said.
They did this by working with subtle nuances and complexity of acting, Limchaco shared.
It started with a 2 minuter that was edited down to 90 seconds, and finally, 81 seconds. This became special for Sharon and Gabby fans because coincidentally, it was the year the love team’s film “Dear Heart” was released.
Torres said that they also got a free teaser campaign because they didn’t expect that Sharon and Gabby would be engaging with each other on Instagram. Even the time the commercial was uploaded, 10:20, was their code of saying I love you.
The fans and even the younger generation’s interest was suddenly piqued by the commercial. Talks of more projects starring the former couple were even sparked by the ad. It was video that captured how it was to listen to conversation, creating with context, collaboration, and confluence.
Watch the panel here:
