Dive Brief:
- McDonald’s has teamed with entertainment company Doodles to launch a holiday cup campaign entitled “GM Spread Joy,” per details shared with Marketing Dive.
- Limited-edition McCafé cups available beginning Nov. 18 feature custom artwork inspired by the Doodles platform. Customers who purchase McCafé beverages can unlock an experience through the McDonald’s app that includes digital wearables and animated content.
- The campaign, which also includes a merchandise drop, demonstrates how brands are utilizing digital collectibles even as marketer interest in the cooling NFT market has receded.
Dive Insight:
McDonald’s wants to help consumers spread joy and say “good morning” via a holiday marketing campaign with Doodles, a company that began as an NFT project in 2021 before branching out into entertainment, art and music and working with brands including Adidas and Crocs. The campaign centers on holiday coffee cups, a branded item popularized by coffee competitor Starbucks. As McDonald’s continues to bolster its coffee offerings, it has dabbled with holiday cups in the past with mixed results.
The collaboration with Doodles is unexpected but makes sense because so much of the entertainment brand’s content revolves around mornings and coffee moments, per McDonald’s CMO Tariq Hassan in a statement.
“Beyond the web3 scope, we chose Doodles because they are an agent of change in the cultural landscape, and they span beyond digital assets — an entertainment brand in itself with a fearless community we cannot wait to interact with and more importantly, bring to more people across the U.S.,” Hassan said.
The new cups feature the pastel art style found in the Doodles universe, and each purchase unlocks an experience in the McDonald’s app that brings the “pack ripping” experience common in collectible cards to the digital realm. Each pack features a unique assortment of branded items including character accessories, digital wearables for Doodles avatars and access to animated content in Doodles’ Stoodio platform.
Beyond the cup-and-app experience, the collaboration features a limited-edition collection of co-branded merchandise that blends McDonald’s iconic characters with Doodles’ art style. The campaign includes a new song inspired by internet culture and viral “GM” memes by rising artist Marley Bleau and produced by Pharrell Williams, who joined Doodles as chief brand officer in 2022. In a charitable element, 10% of e-commerce proceeds will be donated to Free Arts NYC.
Recent marketing efforts have seen McDonald’s lean into culture to engage with consumers and bridge the phygital divide. The chain in August released collector cups that nodded to nostalgic tie-ups and included a Snapchat activation. Other efforts centered on “dupe culture” and anime fandom and spanned channels including episodic content, a Zynga mini-game and more.
McDonald’s U.S. same-stores sales were up 0.3% during the third quarter as the chain works to improve traffic and sales by focusing on value. McDonald’s plans to introduce a Digital Marketing Fund on Jan. 1, 2025 to accelerate digital investments and widen its competitive advantage, bringing together its digital marketing tools in Australia, Canada, Germany, U.K. and the U.S.
