egtabites TV 2015

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Background
his week’s egtabite focuses on two trends often discussed in marketing: multi-screen branded
ontent and the relationship between agencies, clients and sales houses.
n a period when advertisers are working on new ways to engage with consumers and improve their
rand image, McDonald’s searched for an innovative concept on the Spanish market to help change
heir “non-healthy fast food” image. With this in mind, the media group Atresmedia decided to
integrate the brand into Top Chef, one of its most successful prime time programmes with a strong
and well-established quality image.
The concept
The link between Top Chef and McDonald’s was crystal clear: food. The lin
with quality and healthy food was less obvious and needed to be integrate
seamlessly into the programme. Atresmedia, the agency OMD and th
advertiser worked together to create an extensive marketing action around
new Top Chef variant of the existing McExtrem range of high-quality
Spanish-made hamburgers. One of Top Chef’s weekly challenges wa
devoted to the creation of the best McExtrem Top Chef burger, and th
winner would see their creation sold in all of McDonald’s Spanish facilitie
(460 restaurants). This promise left McDonald’s and the agency with a challenge over the summer: to create the entire campaign,
btain a licence and introduce the necessary ingredients into the production line.
or this tailor-made, cross-platform project, Atresmedia and OMD worked closely together. The
arious departments of the sales house – including Marketing, Sales, Special Ads and Programming –
ad to combine their efforts to make this campaign a success. Interestingly, the budget allocated to
pecial ads was three times greater than that devoted to traditional advertising for this campaign. For
nstance, in addition to product placement and sponsoring, consumers could access exclusive content
behind-the-scenes videos, anecdotes from the show’s participants, etc.) on second-screen devices,
hus building on their enthusiasm and creating strong involvement and open dialogue. An additional
eature of the Atresmedia app offered viewers the chance to vote for their favourite creation, with free
urgers for those whose votes matched the jury’s decision.
Results
This campaign was a great success. With 590,000 impressions (online and on mobile), 43,00
clicks, 3.7 million viewers and a 170% increase in McDonald’s mentions on Twitter, Atresmedia hi
the nail on the head in incorporating this brand into the Top Chef program. When asked, 84% o
Top Chef viewers remember having seen a hamburger recipe in the show and 74% of the
managed to attribute it to McDonald’s, while 88% of them claimed they were willing to try the ne
hamburger.
27 February 2015
McDonald’s and Top Chef: a successful branded-content campaign
Target: TV