#MARKiesAwards MY 2021 highlight: McDonald's piques curiosity with 'Do Not Search' video

Fried chicken is one of Malaysians’ favourite dishes, and McDonald’s wanted to make sure it remained top-of-mind for them.

As Ayam Goreng was a staple in many households, the brand knew it had to put a twist on its product. Hence, it worked with OMD Malaysia for the Ayam Goreng Viral campaign which impressed the judges at A+M’s MARKies Awards 2021, and won it the silver award for Most Effective Use – Integrated Media.

Challenge

Malaysia is considered one of the biggest consumers of chicken globally, outdoing other nations, and McDonald’s is known for its Ayam Goreng McD. According to the brand, interest in the product has increased whenever an Ayam Goreng campaign was launched.

While McDonald’s has done well in most of the metrics on brand imagery, KFC has consistently been the strongest contender for “great tasting chicken” mostly driven by its consistent efforts in promoting fried chicken.

In November 2020, McDonald’s brought back the Ayam Goreng McD to further strengthen penetration among the masses, and fried chicken lovers, to close the gap with KFC for “great tasting chicken”.

However, there was nothing new about Ayam Goreng as it’s a regular staple in every Malaysian home. Hence, OMD had to get Malaysians excited again about Ayam Goreng, and make the brand’s approach interesting with a compelling insight to cut through the clutter.

With the plethora of fried chicken videos available online, both paid and user-generated, cleverness and preparation were key to making Ayam Goreng McD stand out and be a part of conversations.

Strategy

Exciting Malaysians with a food, which is already familiar and a staple, is challenging, and yet, it had to be grounded on insight to make it part of the dialogue. And one of the common behaviours observed among Malaysians is that they will do what they are told not to do.

OMD leveraged on the insight of “Do Not Search” to bring to life video content that would appeal to all the chicken lovers out there.

Additionally, OMD felt that dominance should be a key part of the strategy to stand out against the clutter of the key competitor KFC, and everyone else who was promoting fried chicken. The agency was very clear about its strategy in activating the campaign to make it part of the conversation, and this was broken down into three approaches:

1. Leveraging on content grounded in popular insight.

2. Ingesting the element of celebrity influence.

3. Orchestrating virality through the interplay of dominant media channels.

Execution

McDonald’s created an unbranded video called “Jangan Search Ayam Goreng Viral” featuring for the first time the duo of the Malaysian music legend Amy Search, and his celebrity daughter Nabila Huda, who are both popular among mass Malaysians. OMD diverted from the usual way, and commissioned a production house to put up a video.

The agency dropped the video prior to the official launch date using the YouTube channel of the partner TV network. Subsequently, key media partners picked up the video and posted it on their digital platforms to create a semblance of virality. The YouTube channels of the media partners played an important role to house the unbranded video and gain organic interaction.

McDonald’s knew it had to stay competitive against KFC when people searched about Ayam Goreng Viral, and be on the first rank in terms of ad relevancy.

With close collaboration with Google – applying RSA, relevant ad copies, image extensions, competitive bid, and meta tags – OMD ensured the brand had high quality scores and ad relevancy to make Ayam Goreng McD appear on top whenever people searched for “Ayam Goreng Viral”.

Once people started talking and searching about fried chicken again, OMD then officially launched the Ayam Goreng McD campaign and the branded communications started rolling out via YouTube’s Masthead and bumpers to increase reach and frequency, complemented by TrueView for Action to build crave-ability and drive purchase.

Social media also played an important role in pushing Ayam Goreng McD further with  product ads, following the unbranded video. Huda also supported the campaign with value-added postings shared by other radio and TV influencers.

Results

The campaign results met the objective of making the video have a semblance of virality and making it searchable and the talk of the town.

As soon as the video was released, it garnered 200,000 views across multiple top YouTube channels in Malaysia, and achieved 2.5 million views across YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. There were around an additional 700,000 views contributed by the advertorials and additional postings from Huda, and some radio and TV influencers.

The Ayam Goreng Viral launch garnered 12,000 searches in a day (200% higher than the KPI) and boosted the impressions for the overall McDonald’s search campaign to over 84,000 searches in a day.

The brand’s impression share, and click-through rate, was at 97% (beating KFC), and 17%, respectively, versus normal generic product campaigns at 2% CTR.

Within seven days, McDonald’s achieved 44,384 searches which was 40% higher than the usual target. The Ayam Goreng Viral helped to increase overall McDonald’s searches by 46% on 27 October 2020 versus the previous year.

Most importantly, sales spiked by 15% during the video launch day versus the previous week, and McDelivery transactions alone were boosted by 40%. Overall, the campaign helped to boost transactions by an additional 24,000 per day versus the baseline.

Last, 70% of audience chatter had neutral to positive sentiments on the campaign. Most of them felt entertained by the video and expressed their love for the duo celebrities. The video also made the netizens crave for Ayam Goreng McD, besides prompting praise for its good taste.