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You’ve just ordered yourself a Big Mac.

You peel off the Monopoly Sticker…

It’s Old Kent Road.

You reach into your pocket to pull out the Whitechapel Road you collected last week.

You’ve completed the set.

You’ve won yourself free small fries!!!

We’ve all been there. A prime McDonald’s Monopoly moment.

It’s the world’s most successful brand engagement campaign EVER.

Why was it so great?

That’s exactly what you’re about to find out!

Company Overview

Market Cap: 177.6 billion (Source)

2020 Revenue: 19.21 billion (Source)

No introduction is needed here. We’ve all caved and bought a Big Mac in our time.

McDonald’s is the world's leading global foodservice retailer with over 38,000 locations in over 100 countries.

But we aren’t here to talk about the domination of McDonald’s; we are here to talk about McDonald’s best marketing strategy yet.

McDonald’s Monopoly.

Breaking Down The Strategy

Even if you’ve never participated in McDonald's Monopoly, you’ve probably heard of it. And if you haven’t heard of it, there’s a lot it can teach you about running a successful gamified promotional campaign.

The game is simple.

When you buy something from McDonald’s, a little “Peel to play” sticker will be on the packaging (see below).

You peel it off and receive either an “Instant win” or a Monopoly property such as ‘Pall Mall’ or ‘Mayfair’. Once you collect a full set of the Monopoly properties, you give yourself a chance of winning one of the bigger prizes, which include:

• £100,000 cash

• A Mini Cooper

• Ibiza holiday

• Mobile phone and one year contract

When McDonald’s Monopoly goes live, millions flock straight to their local Maccies!

So, why is McDonald’s Monopoly so great from a marketing perspective?

Well, there are two clear reasons:

1. It gamifies their products = more sales

2. It keeps customers coming back = more sales

But how McDonald’s makes this happen is much more complicated than just throwing in a game with their products.

They tied in A LOT of psychology into the campaign amongst some very little tricks that subtly enhance the campaign.

These include:

• Instant Gratification

A phrase thrown around A LOT nowadays. That’s because us humans are OBSESSED with it. Whether its likes on a social media post or the sweet taste of a chocolate bar, we often simply can’t say no. McDonald’s utilises this perfectly with their instant prizes. Buy a meal and have the chance to win a free Big Mac or fries? Sounds like an absolute steal, and so people are more than happy to purchase the meal just for the chance of that instant reward.

• Variable Rewards

If you want to drastically increase the perceived value of your product, without investing a huge amount of money - introduce variable rewards. This concept is used in gambling: people gamble with the hope to win, even though the chances are low. It is important to understand that people are still gambling, even though they know that the bank always wins.

Variable rewards work even better if the scale of the possible rewards is non-linear. There must be a mix of some very large rewards and some more regular lower rewards. Revealing the results gives us a rush of dopamine which gets us excited. (Source)

McDonald’s Monopoly does this perfectly! They have a huge variety of prizes to offer: from small food items to large sums of money, cars, and houses. Guests can’t know what they will win, but that’s why they enjoy playing!

• Reason to come back

Many companies already offer their customers “next-purchase” discounts, to give them an extra reason to come back. This often makes sense, since investing money in a marketing campaign to acquire new customers can be more expensive than providing discounts for the next visit.

In McDonald’s Monopoly, when you’ve collected 2 of 3 out of a set, you’re desperate to find the other. You quickly find yourself much more open to nip into McDonald’s for a quick Big Mac. Because imagine if you FINALLY completed the set and won that £100,000 cash.

• Limited time

This is the thing that ties it all together and boosts the campaign to the next level. The campaign usually lasts only 43 days. So, if you want to win big - you have to visit often. Creating the urge to visit more often in a limited time span of course increases visit frequency and therefore sales.

Now at this point, you may be wondering…

Is the campaign actually profitable for McDonald’s with them having to give away so many prizes?

The answer is well and truly yes!

That might be surprising when you hear that the fast-food chain has given away 9,244,142 prizes in the UK so far.

In 2018 alone they gave away 8,006,175 prizes (in the UK) including 6 Mini Coopers, three £100k prizes, two £25k prizes and a Universal Holiday.

This just goes to show how much money McDonald’s estimates it makes from the campaign.

That being said, the Daily Mail wrote an article which revealed that your chance of getting the top prize is 1 in 136 million. Which means you're more likely to win the EuroMillions jackpot.

So, although a lot of prizes go out, McDonald’s certainly isn’t losing out anytime soon!

If you’re still not sold on the effect of McDonald’s Monopoly, just take a look at the Google search trends over the last 5 years.

Huge amounts of searches for the campaign every time it goes live!

Just look at that search volume in 2019 - 731K searches within a month. Not 731K searches for the company. But 731K searches for a marketing campaign.

Match that!

The McDonald’s Monopoly masterclass is simple:

How To Implement It

You may be thinking you’ll never have something as great as McDonald’s Monopoly. However, this is actually much easier than you think. You just have to answer one question…

How can you gamify your sales for customers?

The best example of this ever didn’t actually happen in real life. It’s the “Golden tickets” in Charlie and the Chocolate factory.

The formula is almost identical to that of McDonald’s Monopoly.

Charlie didn’t buy the chocolate bar to eat it. He bought it to try and win a golden ticket.

That’s exactly what gamification like this can do and it’s exactly why you should try implementing a gamification marketing strategy!

This has been a breakdown of McDonald’s Monopoly marketing strategy. I hope you have learned something and can implement a similar strategy into your business!

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I’ll see you next Sunday!