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.

AR Marketing Best Practices & Case Studies, Volume 5

Head to Head

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, continuing in this installment with the company’s gamified AR campaign to boost awareness around its menu.

Specifically, the game pitted menu items against each other and let users vote. This was presented in a tournament-style bracket (timely now with the World Cup), where menu items went head-to-head as users chose winners in rapid-fire succession until a champion was crowned.

For additional interactivity and participatory vibes, users voted by tilting their heads to one side or the other, corresponding to the competing menu items, displayed on their screen as graphical overlays. This is known as an activation event and is a strong tactic (more on that in a bit).

And the results? McDonald’s achieved a 47-second dwell time and a 174 percent greater share rate than industry benchmarks. As background, dwell time is emerging as a metric for AR ads, as it reflects high user engagement and thus deeper and more meaningful impressions.

Case Study: McDonald’s Triples Down on AR Marketing

Creative & Craveable

So what can we learn from this campaign and what are tactical takeaways? Like the previous McDonald’s AR campaign we examined, much of the success of this campaign was due to gamification. In this case, it was case propelled further by the interactive head tilt mechanics.

Such gesture-based activation events are known to boost AR engagement through a combination of interactivity, agency, and fun. This isn’t always the case, but it can be a natural input to consider when AR campaign creative aligns with gestural inputs and participatory mechanics.

Another element of this campaign was craveability. We’ve seen this a few times in successful AR campaigns for food products. AR excels in visual dimension, so marketers should lean into this capability when food is involved. Putting menu items at the center of the UX is one way to do that.

Of course, all the above was done with mobile AR. The form factor isn’t as buzzy as headworn AR flavors that continue to gain traction, such as smart glasses. But this is where AR has the greatest reach, scaling on the backs of 3 billion global iPhones. And brand marketers are all about reach

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. 

Header image credit: Jurij Kenda on Unsplash