Silver: Brand New!
Silver: Original Idea
Silver: Tech Breakthrough

In Canada, the blended iced beverage market is worth $346 million. McDonald’s was launching its product, the McCafé Iced Frappé, but needed to drive trial against a saturated space.

Millennial females, age 18 to 35, spend more than 20 hours a week online, with the majority of that on their mobile phones. They are also the dominant buyers in the blended iced beverage category. The brand wanted to provide an easy and accessible trial incentive that didn’t involve asking them to print an offer to sample the drink.

So in June 2013, Tribal Worldwide developed FrapTap, a mobile-first technology that used Near Field Communication (NFC) to allow customers to tap their smartphone with a friend’s to gift an Iced Frappé 50% off coupon.

It provided the target audience with an incentive to purchase the drink and they could redeem the coupon in-store by showing the phone to a McDonald’s staff member. Ads promoting the FrapTap were placed on mobile, reaching the target audience when they were surfing, searching and socializing.

More than 200,000 people loaded the FrapTap coupon onto their phones and 40,000 people redeemed, netting a 19% redemption rate, which is significantly higher than the average print coupon redemption rate of 1% to 3%. Since launch, McDonald’s has acquired a 4% share of the blended iced beverage market.

Credits:

Brand: McDonald’s Canada
Agency: Tribal Worldwide
Creative director: Tommy Perez
Design director: John Thai
Copywriter: Jamie King
Art director: Kara Wark
Producer: Gaetano Carpino
Account director: Susan Grant
Designers: Earvin Fanfair, Jean-Lou Renoux
Community manager: Laura Muirhead
Tech director: Joe Dee
Developers: Paul Jara, Zack Ginies
QA: Enzo Licata