McDonald’s Canada’s latest campaign is aiming to reach a specific niche of workers in Quebec’s tech industry.
The QSR’s “Eat the Code” campaign wants to reach developers who are often so focused on their work they forget to eat. The campaign revolves around a promotional website that hides McDonald’s offers in lines of code. The website is designed to tempt tech workers, while encouraging them to take breaks from their work for McDonald’s.
The dev-centric creative felt like a natural fit for McDonald’s Canada, the brand’s marketing director Suzanne Grondin says, because of how the community refers to itself as those who “eat code.” This led the brand to think about hiding promo codes for its food in the code developers were working on.
“We were very conscious of making it fun and accessible to everyone by blending programmers’ jokes and insights with McDonald’s humour. Early in the creative process, we involved our tech partners to ensure the final creative content would be interesting and authentic to the community and have included many exciting surprises for both programmers and non-tech McDonald’s fans to enjoy,” Grondin tells strategy.
Cossette helped develop the campaign, which is also intended to celebrate on the growing tech community in Quebec, where more major gaming, tech and AI studios are opening across the province. She adds that the brand has seen enthusiasm and engagement from consumers to social campaigns that display a “culture-first focus.” So the QSR wanted to offer something that felt particular to Quebec, speaking directly to a target audience within the province of Gen Z and Millennial tech workers.
“Québec is considered one of the world’s epicenters of video game development and production,” Grondin says. “The province has a vibrant and robust gaming industry with over 300 video game development studios, including major international companies. As such, Montreal is often dubbed the capital of gaming in Canada, and this is something we wanted to celebrate with this campaign.”
Aside from hiding offer codes, the website contains other fun elements like burgers falling down the screen when users type “raining burgers,” or a familiar jingle playing when users type “i’m lovin’ it.”
New offers are planned to be released every three days during the first two weeks of June through the website, all of which can be claimed via Doordash.
Along with the campaign’s website, its media plan includes digital signage where McDonald’s Canada products are illustrated in binary code, as well as influencer marketing and social media ads.
Cossette is the creative partner behind the campaign, with OMD overseeing media and Weber in charge of PR.
