McDonald's Malaysia

The objective

Connecting with Gen Z consumers through trends

McDonald’s is already a popular quick-service restaurant in Malaysia but they wanted to strengthen their foothold by capturing and engaging the country’s younger demographic. The fast food giant knew that Gen Z consumers are digital natives, known to make purchase decisions based on trendy experiences and to avoid FOMO (fear of missing out). So McDonald’s turned to TikTok to create a campaign that ticked all the right boxes and resonated with young Malaysians online.

Malaysians love their Chicken McNuggets, so McDonald’s introduced four new limited edition sauces. Apart from their standard Sweet ‘N Sour and BBQ sauces, McDonald’s also offered Cajun, Japanese Curry, Sweet Chili, and French Cheese sauces for their famous Chicken McNuggets.

To make it a uniquely Gen Z campaign, McDonald’s collaborated with popular rapper-producer ALYPH to create a new 30-second edition of his hit song “SWIPE.”

The Solution

What resonates with Gen Z? Interactive, engaging campaigns

To understand which TikTok solutions work best for their campaign and target audience, McDonald’s leveraged TikTok’s Creative Center, which gives brands insights into the top trends, songs, and creators on the platform. Creative Center also allows brands to see successful case studies of advertisements that fared well on the platform.

On TikTok, McDonald’s launched a Branded Hashtag Challenge to promote their new Chicken McNuggets sauces and collaboration with ALYPH. Branded Hashtag Challenges allow brands to creatively engage with their audiences on TikTok by launching trends where anyone on the platform can participate.

Dubbed the #McDDoDaDip challenge, McDonald’s Branded Hashtag Challenge encouraged users to create videos that meet two requirements: The videos should use ALYPH’s #McDDoDaDip edition of “SWIPE” as audio, and show a creative “finger dance” with McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets and their sauces.

The fast food chain tapped 19 TikTok influencers to promote the challenge among Malaysian users. These influencers’ videos were then boosted on the platform via Spark Ads, which amplify native videos from real TikTok accounts. For this campaign, McDonald’s chose TikTok influencers known for music and dance content and who were popular among Gen Z Malaysians on the platform.

Lastly, McDonald’s conducted a Brand Lift Study to measure how effective their campaign was in terms of ad recall, engagement using the #McDDoDaDip hashtag, and purchase conversions. The entire campaign ran from May to June 2023.

The Results

The right campaigns lead to real results

The Brand Lift Study showed that McDonald’s #McDDoDaDip campaign was an incredible success—it engaged, converted, and ultimately ramped up sales for their Chicken McNuggets.

The #McDDoDaDip hashtag garnered about 22.2 million views across videos. While McDonald’s tapped 19 influencers to create content to promote their Chicken McNuggets, the campaign saw 441 organic submissions from other TikTok users in Malaysia. There was also an 81% spike in TikTok conversations about McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets, and the campaign led to a 15.8% boost in ad recall for McDonald’s.

#McDDDoDaDip led to a 6% increase in Chicken McNugget purchases among Malaysian teenagers—a testament to how using the right TikTok campaigns can lead to offline benefits for your brand.

Leveraging engaging TikTok trends coupled with a deep understanding of Gen Z behavior on the platform helped McDonald’s bag the Gold Award in the Best Branding Campaign category for Malaysia’s TikTok Ad Awards 2024.