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Immersive marketing continues to be an opportune, yet still challenged, segment. Sitting at the intersection of brand marketing and spatial computing, it includes things like sponsored AR lenses that let consumers interact and engage with brands, or virtually try on products.
Driving immersive marketing are a few key elements. Lens creation software arms brands and developers with low-code tools to author AR experiences. Meanwhile, networks like Snapchat and TikTok likewise offer the ability to amplify lenses throughout their social graphs.
There’s also a real business case, which can be seen in the performance metrics around AR campaigns. And though the future of AR is headworn, we’re mostly talking about AR marketing on smartphones. That’s where the scale lies… and brand marketers are all about scale.
This is the topic of a recent report from our research arm, ARtillery Intelligence, including ecosystem analysis and case studies from real AR marketing campaigns. The report joins our excerpt series, continuing in this installment with a look at McDonald’s’ AR campaign.
Chant Challenge
Continuing our AR marketing case studies with a household name, McDonald’s has not one but three immersive campaigns that we’ll spotlight. We’ll examine them one at a time, starting today with the company’s gamified AR challenge that prompted users to literally sing for their dinner.
Specifically, McDonald’s Australia wanted to cultivate a new generation of fans for the iconic Big Mac, and to revive its popularity in the region. Working with agencies DDB & OMD Sydney, it tapped into the nostalgia around the classic Big Mac theme song, first introduced in the 1970s.
To make it immersive and participatory, it infused an AR interaction. Known as the Chant Challenge, users sang the song (“Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce cheese…”) into their cameras while being recorded and timed. This included animations and a stopwatch overlay.
Users who sang the song in less than four seconds completed the challenge and unlocked a discount code. This was part of a broader campaign across radio, television, and Snapchat. All of these ads were targeted to Gen Z consumers and drove users to the Chant Challenge.
Immersive & Nostalgic
And the results? The campaign reached over four million people on Snapchat and was shared over 108,000 times. The lens also achieved a 9.8-second average playtime. Among 25-34 year olds, the campaign drove a 14 percent lift in purchase intent and a 6 percent lift in awareness.
As icing on the cake (or special sauce on the Big Mac), the campaign won a Cannes Silver Lion award. Known as the Original Mouthful, the campaign combined elements of nostalgia, immersive interaction, and fun. And the results show in its combined reach and performance.
As for strategic takeaways, other key elements that drove the campaign’s traction include gamification. The time-based challenge drove engagement and viral appeal through friendly competition vibes. Users shared it with friends with friendly taunts to beat their time.
In terms of distribution, the campaign also hit the right marks by utilizing several channels and formats beyond AR. When such omnichannel approaches are done right, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and AR is assisted by more penetrated and mainstream mediums.
We’ll pause there and circle back in the next installment of this series with another campaign case study. Meanwhile, check out the full report.