McDonald's Monopoly

I don’t know about you but I love it when McDonald's brings back the Monopoly game on their products! There's something about peeling off a sticker to see if you have won a free Big Mac, Soft Drink, the Street that you've been waiting for or (if you are very lucky, a brand new car - sadly I haven't been that lucky yet) that excites a lot of people.

This is a form of the marketing theory Gamification/Advergaming which is becoming a big trend amongst businesses as a way of marketing their products to consumers. This marketing technique is when there is a mix between interactive advertisement and online games.

"The Fast-Dealing Property Trading Game", Monopoly, is a much loved family game in the UK, created in United States in 1930s and is a game all about property and economy, where you buy and sell land to develop on it to become the “richest” player.  And McDonald’s have used this game as a way of creating Gamification with their products.

So if you are not familiar with what McDonald’s do in ‘monopoly season’ they provide stickers on a collection of their products, and how many chances you have depends on the size of your meal (small, medium & large). Each of these stickers see a chance to win an prize, which includes, a code that gives you a chance to win a cash prize, a property on the monopoly ladder, vouchers, or an instant win - which can include a free product from McDonald’s or even a bigger prize such as new TV, a new car or even a cash prize.  

McDonald’s have used Gamification in this movement by creating consumer interaction by providing the consumer with a code where they are directed to go to McDonald's website to enter it and see if they have won. Keeping in with the monopoly theme McDonald's gives the consumer the option to choose which Monopoly character they want to be. This is creating a game of monopoly for the consumer online. 

The website that the consumers are directed to for entering their code online to find out if they are a winner is the McDonald’s website. However it is not a direct link, once they enter the website address they are faced with the homepage of McDonald’s which is full of monopoly related material however there are other links that the consumer can a click on, for example “What Is In Our Products & Food Quality”. By doing this they will be hope that the consumer is distracted by the other links and views these before what they came to do first (the monopoly code). This information that they will be viewing will educate their consumers in to knowing more about the brand, their values and what they are currently doing.

The aim of the game is just like Monopoly, you are trying to collect as many streets as possible until you have all of one colour, then you win a prize. Starting with the Brown properties being the least special prize which is a Meal from McDonald’s, which are easier to win, working up to the big prize of a £100,000 Cash Prize. 

With McDonalds pairing up with Monopoly it creates brand awareness for Monopoly as well. Monopoly can be related to culture within the UK as it is considered as a “ritual” to some families who like to play this game with their families during holidays such as birthdays and Christmas. Rituals are considered to be repeated periodically and Monopoly is a ritual artefact (Soloman, 2010) and can be considered as a something of importance to some families, especially at times of family get-togethers which will bring in some consumers to McDonald’s. As they value Monopoly so they will go to McDonalds as there is a link between this and the game. 

This relates to how McDonald’s have also used the Monopoly product to create Nostalgia to evoke emotions. Due to Monopoly being something that is related to family get-togethers, it is also links to Nostalgia with consumers who used to play this when they were younger. This could be a potential marketing technique for McDonalds to appeal to an older target market, who typically do not go to McDonalds. Soloman (2010) suggests that research has shown that peoples are appealed to products that are influenced by what was once popular during parts of their youth. As McDonald’s typical audience are “A parent with two children, Children, A Business Customer or Teenagers” (Marketing at McDonald's, 2016) they are using Monopoly to create Nostalgia with elderly people to create an appeal around McDonald’s for them to come and eat their products. 

Monopoly has also created different versions of the game, for example, the London Edition, there is also an addition of the town where I come from, Weymouth. This relates to using culture to market new products, monopoly have identified that they are able to make the game more personal to the consumer by creating the game around places they come from.  

Please leave your comments on the McDonald's Monopoly campaign and your thoughts, I am very interested to know what you think!

References

Soloman, M. (2010). Consumer behavior. [S.l.]: Pearson Education.

Marketing at McDonald's. (2016). 1st ed. [ebook] McDonalds. Available at: http://www.mcdonalds.co.uk/content/dam/McDonaldsUK/People/Schools-and-students/mcd_marketing.pdf [Accessed 22 Mar. 2016].