McDonald's
Project: Uncle O'Grimacey Returns
Reuniting the Grimace family while helping RMHC families
McDonald’s relationship with Ronald McDonald House Charities (RMHC) is a top driver of brand reputation. However even after 50 years of support, many don’t understand McDonald’s role as a founding and forever partner. We needed to change that.
01The challenge
To help improve awareness for our RMHC relationship and encourage donations through the purchase of Shamrock Shakes, we needed to entertain fans with a culture-forward idea–with no advertising campaign, no new menu news, and no operational changes in restaurant.
02The solution
As the world’s largest restaurant franchise, McDonald’s has a fervent fanbase and a backlog of legendary characters. We discovered Grimace’s long-lost uncle, Uncle O’Grimacey – a character connected to the Shamrock Shake who hadn’t been seen in 40 years, but had fans begging for his return. The RMHC anniversary gave us a cultural hook to tell our story: reunite the Grimace family to help RMHC families.
Uncovering an untapped McDonald’s Universe
We created a social video with Ancestry reuniting Grimace and Uncle O’Grimacey, facilitated their live reunion on national morning broadcast show, TODAY, and brought them to the offices of major consumer lifestyle media. We also released merchandise with a portion of proceeds going to RMHC. Passionate fan response prompted an extended tour for Uncle O’Grimacey, including the February 12th Boston Celtics game, a boat on the Chicago River for St. Patrick’s Day and the Empire State Building during the Shamrock Shake promotion.
03The impact
Raising awareness and donations for a cause
Within the first week of the campaign, we surpassed results of past McDonald’s campaigns that had full ad support. Uncle O’Grimacey broke through with media, bringing the return of the Shamrock Shake to everywhere from national news to entertainment media to late night conversation. Both the media and Internet drank it up, with our efforts generating over 8 billion earned impressions and 3.8K earned media placements. Through Shamrock Shake sales, we raised nearly $3.5 million dollars for RMHC, equating to roughly 35,000 overnight stays for families.
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