McDonald’s – My Burger Campaign (the first burger created by a fan)

Razorfish Germany came up with the “Make Your Own Burger” campaign to celebrate McDonald’s 40th year of being “Germany’s favorite restaurant.” Razorfish Germany used friendly competition and crowdsourcing to help McDonald’s come up with a new way to engage with its consumers, this campaign won a Silver Medallion at AME Awards.

The “Pretzelnator” is the first of five burgers to be created from the crowd-sourced “Mein Burger” campaign started by German agencies Razorfish, Berlin and Heye & Partner, Unterhaching for McDonald’s Germany. In this campaign, McDonald’s encouraged their customers to create their own custom made burger and compete for a place on the menu of the fast-food chain. 2011 marked McDonald’s 40th anniversary in Germany and Razorfish had to create a campaign to mark the big occasion, but with a small budget. “So many promotional burgers had been launched. Would yet another one excite our fans?” explains the Razorfish video. “We knew that many dreamed of creating their own individual McDonald’s burger. A burger that would appear on the plates of our two million daily guests. So we created a competition and invited everyone to take part. It was time for Germany’s first crowd-sourced burgers. By the fans, for the fans.” Fans were invited to create their own burger using the “Burger Configurator”, an online tool that allowed users to compile their design using mora than 70 different ingredients.

“We gave them the tools, they created the buzz,” says Razorfish. The cost-effective campaign allowed fans to name their creations and even promote them on social media platforms with personalised spots, with the aim of generating votes from other users. The ten most popular burgers made it to the next round in the McDonald’s test kitchen. The inventors then get to present their creations to the jury who decided which made it to the next stage.  Facebook fans were able to watch the event live on video and root for their favourites.

Of the ten finalists, the five best burgers will be available in McDonald’s restaurants throughout Germany and their inventors get to star in their very own ad campaign on national TV and radio.

The results exceeded all expectations. 45,000 individual burgers were created in the first seven days – without a single cent of media spend. In total more than 116,000 burgers were posted – one every 26 seconds! The fans generated more than 12,000 personalized ad campaigns, and more than 1.5 million votes were cast. 7 million page visits made “My Burger” the most successful campaign ever on the McDonald’s Germany portal. During the jury event, the McDonald’s Facebook fan page was accessed more than 1 million times – all on a single day!

With all the buzz generated, the campaign managed to reach more than 21 million contacts, that’s one in four Germans. Never before has a McDonald’s campaign attracted as many new customers, sold as many promotion burgers or generated as much total revenue.The winning Pretzelnator burger is now being served in McDonald’s locations across Germany for a limited time. This particular creation is topped with ham, American and Italian cheese and has a pretzel-like bun.

Advertising Agency: Razorfish, Germany
Year: 2011

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