1 burger, 7 ingredients, 2,000+ beneficiaries: Here’s how this campaign made waves across Spain! [Thursdays: Gorillas of Guerrilla Marketing]
Miles Everson’s Business Builder Daily speaks to the heart of what great marketers, business leaders, and other professionals need to succeed in advertising, communications, managing their investments, career strategy, and more.
A Note from Miles Everson:
Happy Thursday and welcome to “Gorillas of Guerrilla Marketing!”
For those of you who haven’t encountered this term yet, guerrilla marketing is an unconventional, engaging, impactful, and easy-to-execute marketing strategy.
According to Jay Conrad Levinson, campaigns of this type spark an emotional reaction that enables consumers to effectively remember a brand.
Today, allow us to share with you a clever and heartwarming guerrilla marketing strategy.
Keep reading to know how this global fast food chain backed the agriculture sector in Spain during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 through an innovative, high-quality marketing tactic.
Miles Everson
CEO, MBO Partners
Chairman of the Advisory Board, The I Institute
Gorillas of Guerrilla Marketing
What is your definition of “good?”
Is it…
Being morally upright?
Being kind, honest, or helpful?
Being satisfactory in quality, quantity, or degree?
We all have different definitions of “good.” Some associate this term with a person, while others associate it with a thing, event, cause, or campaign.
Did you know that in 2020, one fast food brand conducted a GOOD guerrilla marketing campaign in Spain?
That brand is none other than…
McDonald’s!
Photo from WIRED
McDonald’s is a multinational fast food chain founded in 1940. It is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, and has over 38,000 branches in 100+ countries.
As one of the Big 3 burger chains in the U.S., McDonald’s is not only known for its primary offerings such as hamburgers, fries, chicken, etc. It is also known for conducting engaging, purposeful, and feel-good marketing campaigns.
One of these campaigns?
The “Big Good!”
The Big Good was a limited edition burger from McDonald’s from December 2020 to March 2021. It was co-created by the fast food brand and the marketing agency TBWA/Spain, and not only fed Spanish citizens but also helped the agricultural sector face the crisis provoked by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Here’s a brief background on why McDonald’s created this campaign…
Since March 2020, thousands of farmers all over Spain have been affected by the health crisis and the closure of the catering sector. Demand for livestock, poultry, and other farm produce fell by around 50% to 100%.
So, at the peak of the pandemic—and despite all its branches closed in Spain—McDonald’s decided to launch a new product: A burger created to help those in the Spanish countryside badly hit by the health and economic crisis.
To do this, McDonald’s did the opposite of its usual practice. Normally, a recipe is first designed before food suppliers are sought. Here, the fast food brand first sought the hardest hit suppliers’ ingredients then created a recipe.
From there, the Big Good burger was brought to life!
The product included 7 locally-sourced ingredients from Spanish farmers:
- Extremaduran beef
- Semi-cured cheese
- Batavia lettuce
- Tomato
- Onion
- Bread with wheat flour, rye, and spelt
- Mediterranean sauce
With this menu, McDonald’s helped reignite and contribute to the recovery of the Spanish agricultural sector.
What else did the fast food brand and TBWA/Spain do to increase the visibility of the Big Good burger?
-
A 30-minute Documentary Film
The campaign team profiled the individual stories of some livestock and agricultural producers who supplied ingredients for the Big Good burger in a 30-minute documentary film.
Directed by Spanish film director Nacho Clemente and produced by TBWA/Spain, the documentary immersed viewers in the creation of the Big Good burger, from the origin of its ingredients to the final product.
The film also gave an up-close look at the behind-the-scenes of McDonald’s Spain accompanying leaders of the campaign as they brought the Big Good burger to life.
-
TV Spot and Online Marketing
After the documentary was created, the campaign team created shorter videos to upload on McDonald’s Spain’s social media and further increase engagement with online users. The fast food brand also secured a TV spot to showcase a commercial about the “Big Good” campaign.
The web page, BigGood.es, was also created. Here, McDonald’s included extensive details about the campaign and what people could do to help Spain’s agricultural sector.
-
Billboards
Aside from the documentary, TV spot, and online marketing strategies, the campaign team created out-of-home (OOH) ads that were mostly displayed on billboards in Spain’s larger and more urbanized cities.
These helped the campaign gain additional exposure and encourage people to try out the Big Good burger, which was available in all McDonald’s branches in the country!
Was McDonald’s “Big Good” campaign effective?
With the launch of the Big Good burger, McDonald’s was able to contribute to the visibility of the Spanish primary sector. What’s more?
The campaign also gave voice to the stories of each farm producer who supplied an ingredient to the Big Good burger!
Take a look at the results of the campaign:
- Over 330,000 Big Good burgers were sold throughout the campaign.
- During the campaign, McDonald’s generated more than EUR 2 million in PR value.
- More than 2,000 Spanish farmers/food producers benefited from the launch of the “Big Good” campaign.
- The campaign was talked about in various media outlets in Spain, such as elDiario.es, El Comercio, El Confidencial, COPE, elEconomista.es, Expansión, and more.
- The campaign bagged the following awards in 2021:
– 2 Shortlists at The ONE SHOW Awards
– 1 Grand Prize, 1 Gold, 1 Silver, and 1 Bronze at the BEST!N FOOD
AWARDS
– 1 Shortlist at the D&AD Awards
– 1 Silver, 1 Bronze, and 3 Shortlists at the EL SOL Festival
– 2 Silvers at the CdC Awards
– 1 Silver and 1 Bronze at the Spanish Effie Awards
Based on these numbers and recognitions, we can see that McDonald’s “Big Good” campaign was effective in bringing something new to Spanish citizens’ tables and supporting those badly hit by the pandemic.
Kudos, McDonald’s and TBWA/Spain!
—
According to Juan García Escudero, CCO of TBWA/Spain:
“Big Good is the result of many months working hand in hand with McDonald’s. It is an innovation, a launch, a quality campaign, a CSR campaign, and a documentary film, but above all, it is a tangible contribution of a great brand to the agricultural sector during this complicated situation in which we are all living. I think it is just what we need. I hope more brands step up and offer real contributions to society through product and action.”
Meanwhile, Natalia Echeverría, CMO of McDonald’s Spain, said:
“Currently, it’s more important than ever that brands are close to society and act on their purpose. With Big Good, we have highlighted McDonald’s commitment to the local economy and our support for the primary sector. It is something that we have been doing for many years, but which we now want to reinforce, by helping more than 2,000 producers reactivate their economy and deal with the crisis caused by COVID-19.”
What do these statements tell you as a business owner, leader, or marketer?
Fun and engaging marketing campaigns are powerful, but they become even more powerful and impactful when there’s a purpose behind them.
Besides, lots of consumers nowadays are more drawn towards businesses that are active not only in the marketing space but also in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) space. This gives them the assurance that aside from generating profits, these brands also care about the communities where they operate in.
We hope you enjoyed reading today’s guerrilla marketing feature!
Keep in mind that a robust financial state is society’s reward to businesses that fulfill their constituents’ unmet needs.
So, when you plan your own guerrilla marketing strategies, take note of the factors that will appeal to your target audience, compel them to act on your call-to-action, and address their needs and wants.
Stay tuned for next week’s “Gorillas of Guerrilla Marketing!”
(This article is from The Business Builder Daily, a newsletter by The I Institute in collaboration with MBO Partners.)
About The Dynamic Marketing Communiqué’s
“Thursdays: Gorillas of Guerrilla Marketing”Jay Conrad Levinson (1984) said that Guerrilla Marketing “works because it’s simple to appreciate, easy to execute, and inexpensive.”
Guerrilla Marketing is unconventional.
Looking beyond the traditional ways of advertising, marketers, and advertisers need to spice things up in order for their brand to have campaigns that not only make an impact but also stick to their target market’s mind.
Guerrilla Marketing usually aims to have direct contact with consumers.
This type of direct contact should spark an emotional reaction that leads to consumers effectively remembering the brand.
It’s about making a big impression and making that impression last a long time (if not forever).
Guerrilla Marketing can be inexpensive.
The effect of this is being able to create a buzz around the brand, and the strategy used to market it. Almost everything is passed around through word-of-mouth.
Word-of-mouth is one of the greatest outcomes and it usually doesn’t cost anything.
This is every business’ or brand’s dream!
Every Thursday, we publish tips, examples, and other useful content on unconventional ways of marketing and promotion.
Learn more about how to grab your target market’s attention and make an amazing first and lasting impression without having to spend a lot of money.
Businesses don’t really need to spend much for a guerrilla campaign. You do not need a big budget to be successful. You just need creativity and a good imagination.
Hope you’ve found this week’s guerrilla marketing insight interesting and helpful.
Stay tuned for next Thursday’s Gorillas of Guerrilla Marketing!
Cheers,
Kyle Yu
View All
Head of Marketing
Valens Dynamic Marketing Capabilities
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