2009 Monopoly at McDonald's

Best Mobile Marketing Campaign

2009 Monopoly at McDonald's
Agency: The Marketing Store
Client: McDonald's

McDonald’s planned to rerun its successful Monopoly promotion in 2009 targeting moms and young adults. The Marketing Store was charged with attracting more players and growing the number of mobile codes entered over the previous year. And it had to be done with 10 percent fewer product labels, leading to 10 percent fewer game pieces, in market.

With purchases of McDonald’s food, consumers received a peel-off game stamp which held an access code underneath. Participants texted the access code to a mobile short code; then, if they replied to a text message with their birth year, they got another message, with a five-digit PIN and the randomly generated “dice roll” results of their play.

When users registered at playatmcd.com, they could use the mobile PIN to link their holdings in the online game to the properties they’d collected via text play. Once text users registered online, they could submit up to 10 text codes a day. The core of the game remained collection of codes, which could only be done through in-store purchases.

The game achieved a 48 percent leap in mobile product codes entered, from just under 1.5 million in 2008 to nearly 2.1 million in 2009. On average, mobile players entered 28 percent more codes in 2009 compared to 2008. Ultimately, mobile code entry contributed to 6 percent more product codes entered online in 2009 over 2008, 5 percent more unique players --  breaking the 4 million online players mark – and 13 percent more site visits.

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