#MARKiesAwards MY 2021 highlight: Esports fans deliver a treat for McDonald’s

The esports scene has been growing in popularity, with many brands riding the wave as sponsors. McDonald’s Malaysia wanted to maintain mindshare of its McDelivery service during the pandemic, in particular, by targeting esports fans within the country.

A survey by Nielsen conducted for the brand in 2019 found that the majority of its consumers were gamers, and were drawn towards the competitive nature of esports. Seeing this demand, McDonald’s jumped on board as a sponsor for the IGN SEA PUBG Mobile Tournament to drive reach and sales for McDelivery.

The “Squad Up” campaign was done in collaboration with OMD Malaysia, and saw the brand clinch the bronze award for Most Effective Use – Esports Marketing at A+M’s MARKies Awards 2021.

Challenge

Esports has seen a tremendous increase in users since the COVID-19 outbreak, and it has become an opportunity for brands such as McDonald’s to connect with consumers. In Malaysia, esports fans are largely Millennials, and according to a Nielsen study conducted for McDonald’s in 2019, nine out of 10 fans are also gamers.

They are generally more drawn towards the competitive nature of esports, thus, they continue to engage. MOBA titles are highly popular among fans, and the top two most followed franchises are Dota2 and PUBG. And when it comes to consuming content, the most preferred mode of viewing esports is via mobile phones and YouTube.

With reach and sales being impacted during the outbreak of COVID-19, McDonald’s needed to find an alternative, yet growing space, to dial up on the McDelivery brand, and drive purchases. 

McDonald’s Malaysia partnered with Google in August 2020 to run a sponsorship with the IGN SEA PUBG Mobile Tournament for McDelivery to drive both reach and sales. The largest TV network came into play as well in the partnership to reach as many gamers as possible through their YouTube channel.

OMD Malaysia was assigned a budget of around RM200,000 for the campaign.

Strategy

OMD recognised there was a huge opportunity with connecting gamers to McDonald’s. Based on the Nielsen esports study, the agency learnt that 90% of Malaysia’s esports fans engage with mobile games, and the affinity to McDonald’s was high. Hence, there were three big opportunities for McDonald’s in the esports space.

1. Growth in penetration, which made esports a timely platform for building McDonald’s among new audiences.

2. Casual food from quick-service restaurants such as McDonald’s is highly favoured by esports fans, according to the study. Hence, there was an opportunity to dial-up on convenience, while fans and gamers were in the zone.

3. Fans engage with gaming personalities, and YouTube is the most consumed platform for content. Hence, forging a partnership with YouTube married the elements of the platform’s reach, which posed a big chance for visibility and affinity.

With that, McDonald’s came in with McDelivery as the sponsoring brand to forge a partnership to power up the brand, and its convenience, during the pandemic among esports fans.

Being a long-term Google partner, the brand leveraged on the total of its YouTube buys in August 2020 to make the brand’s investment strategy more hard-working, as it had limited money to work with. This gave OMD an opportunity to further negotiate on the exposure and entitlements to make the execution bigger.

Execution

The McDelivery message was embedded throughout the tournament. The placements included catering for McDonald’s food and drinks (McCafé) for the panel video; exposure of the McDelivery logo in the game; regular call-outs on YouTube live-chat where gamers constantly communicate with each other; and YouTube regular advertising support via TrueView and Masthead.

Throughout the finale, there were product placements on the influencers’ table as well as mentions in the two-day period. OMD also commissioned the hosts to conduct six branded segments.

There was also constant brand exposure through in-game crawlers, and McDelivery branding. At the same time, YouTube also offered added support through exposure on the Masthead, which was considered a roadblock in 2020, the agency said.

The activation also garnered media coverage from various partners, including Astro, Harian Metro, Rev Asia, IGN Southeast Asia, and NST.

Results

OMD Malaysia touted the results as “outstanding” as the tournament turned out to be one of the biggest gaming events globally with about 20,000 attendees.

On the media front, the brand’s live mastheads delivered a nine-million reach across Malaysia, while Trueview for Action served in gaming channels, and Media Prima platforms garnered a total reach of five million, and a frequency of three times.

The cost-per-conversion was RM6.30 which was about 50% lower versus the target.

Meanwhile, in terms of transactions, McDelivery had an additional 12,900 orders during the campaign period, increasing sales by 80% compared with the previous month.

All of this was garnered with only RM200,000 additional investment for both branding and conversions.

The actual media value earned from the partnership was 2.3 million, which OMD said was 10 times the actual investment.