When McDonald’s Belgium prepared to launch the global “Air McDo” summer campaign, they needed media partners who could make the concept feel authentic and engaging. Belgian radio stations Radio Contact (Wallonia) and Nostalgie (Flanders) won the business by showing how they could shift the story towards emotion and the excitement of winning holidays, turning a global campaign concept into an integrated summer experience.

Delivering Authentic Experiences

The concept of Air McDo competition was simple: spot the Air McDo-branded plane flying over a McDonald’s restaurant, take a selfie, send it to the radio DJs via playnostalgie.be or radiocontact.be (or their apps), and you could win trips to destinations including Singapore, New York, Montreal, Tokyo, Japan, Canada, and Mexico.

Radio Contact and Nostalgie took this further, building the campaign around real summer experiences where people were already thinking about holidays. The creative approach centred on three environments: airports, the coast, and a major summer festival – Beach Festival Nieuwpoort.

Building the Story Across Channels

The newspaper advertising demonstrated how the partnership evolved throughout the summer.

The first co-branded ads featured Radio Contact and Nostalgie prominently, with McDonald’s branding kept deliberately small. This built awareness of the summer schedule and positioned radio as the platform.

Later ads flipped the approach entirely. They showed one of the DJs in Tokyo, one of the competition destinations, with McDonald’s now taking centre stage. The focus shifted from the radio stations to McDonald’s. Both partners benefited at different stages of the campaign.

A TV spot brought the entire summer story together, showing the festival, beach locations and holiday theme. Rather than being a separate piece of communication, it amplified what was happening on the radio and tied everything back to the central Air McDo concept.

Multi-Partner Reality

McDonald’s wasn’t alone in the summer programme. Six different brands were integrated across the same events and locations, including BYD with their karaoke activation.

Radio Contact and Nostalgie essentially ran a summer entertainment platform with various brands playing specific roles. This approach requires clear differentiation, but it demonstrates how stations can monetise the same infrastructure multiple times while giving each brand a distinct story.

Creating Multiple Touchpoints

In this campaign, the radio’s strength was its flexibility. Radio delivers presence in the actual moments when people experience holiday excitement. The stations moved broadcasts to airports during peak travel times, interviewed real holidaymakers, and integrated McDonald’s into existing beach programming and festival presence.

The brand plugged into programming that was already reaching summer audiences in relevant environments. The efficiency came from leveraging infrastructure that was already in place. The stations were broadcasting from these locations as part of their summer schedule anyway.

McDonald’s seamlessly became part of the story, creating multiple touchpoints that reinforced the campaign theme throughout the summer.

Radio provided the context, captured the emotion, and made the connection between McDonald’s and summer holidays feel genuine.

The campaign demonstrates radio’s unique ability to be present where other media simply can’t. By partnering with Radio Contact and Nostalgie, McDonald’s Belgium associated a taste experience with the dream of a real journey, making the taste buds travel while offering everyone the chance to discover new destinations.

This case was presented at our 2025 Marketing & Sales Meeting in Helsinki. Watch the full presentation here