McDonald's
Increasing emotional ROI & building brand love with Branded Effect
The Objective
Building brand love through emotions
Being one of the top QSR advertisers in Poland with a strong awareness, McDonald's always aims not only to maintain high level of ad recall, but to win users' hearts at any occasion. With the new upcoming offer Friends, inspired by legendary series, McDonald's was looking for ways to build this valuable emotional connection with users, while driving business results.
The Solution
Watched it, loved it, eat it
In order to rise the occasion, McDonald's, together with TBWA and OMD Group, has decided place Branded Effect as a central part of their SoMe media activation sharing the brand messaging through its community, so the users become a part of a campaign.
Branded Effects is the name of TikTok's commercial visual effects such as filters and lenses, where production is supported by TikTok Creative partners. When applied to a video, a Branded Effect enables you to achieve deeper engagement with users in a more interactive way and to boost brand buzz.
Unlike for all previous branded effects, for Friends activation McDonald's decided to tap directly into #newstalgia trend and use the cues from Friends series as emotional triggers.
As a result, branded effect allowed users to test their knowledge of the famous series, by asking questions and rewarding those users who managed to answer questions properly. McDonald's made sure to align aesthetic and visual elements for digital assets with physical collectibles, served with each Friends order at physical restaurants.
The Results
Friends ate it!
The campaign delivered outstanding efficiency and engagement across the platform. Comparing to the previous Branded Effect, "Friends" managed to gather 207% more likes and comments, while achieving a -53% lower cost per UGC-content created.
In terms of massive reach and platform interaction, the "Friends" effect drove over 1.6 million effect plays and was watched over 10 million times, generating a total of 1,414 user-created videos.
TikTok is at its best when brands give people something to play with—and that’s exactly what we achieved with our Friends Branded Effect. By leaning into platform-native, community-first creativity, we transformed nostalgic cues into an interactive format that users actively wanted to share. Working with our agency partners and TikTok’s creative ecosystem, we built an experience that was engaging on-screen and consistent with the physical collectibles available in restaurants. This fit-for-platform approach helped us generate 1,414 user videos and 10.2M views, while significantly lifting engagement.