People may do anything for a free lunch (don’t mind “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch”) these days – or just to have fun?
Even stare at an interactive billboard outside a McDonald’s in Stockholm and play a Pong-style game with your smartphone!
It’s called Pick’n’Play the very latest marketing experiment by McDonald’s that has allowed several participants to win a free snack by playing with their smartphone just by passing by the fast food and logging to Pick’n’Play web site.
My guess is that by leveraging GPS position of the user’s smartphone, the system would give a sort of ‘game token’ and chance to play on the building billboard just over McDonald’s.
The game?
A 30-seconds Pong match that uses your smartphone touchscreen as a paddle against the computer (a McPong villain!): those able to win were awarded a free lunch voucher to redeem straight into the McDonald’s.
Success?
Although an experimental idea, it seems it’s been quite a success and WOM has made it already ‘soon-to-be-here’ in the UK and throughout Europe.
The gear behind and idea strong points?
My guess is:
– GPS tracking, no way to cheat
– no app to download, purchase or install: just a web app (as far as I can understand it)
– an easy game that has a huge reckoning among people 3-103 years old
– a casual-game appeal
– an easy redeem procedure: you just get into McDonald’s and show your winning code on your smartphone
– competition-bound virality
This is one clever marketing strategy that will have you saying “I’m Lovin’ It.”
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