Happinated – Gaming & Social Media Driving Awareness, Affinity, and Adoption

McDonald’s was preparing to launch their new McCafe line into the highly competitive coffee industry. In order to make an impact, we knew that we had to do something that their competitors weren’t, and still adhere to a tight budget.

With that, came “Happinated”. The primary tactic was to create an interactive flash game to take advantage of the growing female gamer demographic that crossed over into our worker female 18-34 demographic and greatly catered to the worker 18-34 male demographic.

To create a further connection with the intended audience, the game itself was set within a satirized version of the workplace. We poked fun at work birthdays, the boss’s orders, copying machines, and more.

This game created an engagement average of over 3 minutes, and an email signup rate of over 60% of all visitors. This was followed up with an email blast that pushed current promotions, with an extremely high open rate of over 50%. The gaming tactic was a huge success.

The secondary tactic was to implement Twitter to be a customer service tool and an inspirational ambassador. @Happinated (on Twitter) regularly had updates that consisted of funny, G-rated jokes, inspirational thoughts, and updates on McDonald’s offers and events within the Southeast region.

With @Happinated, we were able to drive additional participation to McDonald’s events, push coupon downloads and redemptions, and tackle customer service issues, converting unsatisfied customers, to McDonald’s evangelists.

Overall, McDonald’s is very happy with the performance of this campaign, and this was a great experience for me.