I know, right. McDonald's has been running their iconic Monopoly marketing campaign for 18 long years. Although, it doesn't feel like that many years, does it. It kind of feels like having a kid, blinking, and they are now turning into an adult.
For 2024, McDonald's and MONOPOLY have supercharged the campaign - by introducing "Power Peel". Power Peel adds to the mouth watering campaign success by empower us (the consumer) to use our fingers to unlock more ways to win over 70 million prizes. And the prize pool is not all about McDonald's, they do subtly nod to MONOPOLY, with prizes like 'Train' credit and ‘Free Parking’.
Building on what their consumers love most: the PEEL, the peel-on-pack element remains, offering a chance to reveal a property or an instant win.
But it doesn't end there! Oh no.
The fun continues within the McDonald’s mobile app, where players peel, scan, and collect property codes, where they can complete their sets to win prizes. When a consumer banks a property in the app, they’re given another chance to win through an extra in-app 'Digital Peel'. An awesome way to seamlessly connect, and continue, both physical and digital consumer engagement for the brands. (Well done to the strategy team on that one!)
You've just got to "Peel on pack, make moves in App".
Visualising the end-to-end mechanic lifecycle of a playing consumer
There are a total of 4 ways your can play the MONOPOLY campaign, as outlined in their rules and terms. Each of the following games can be played this year:
Instant Win Game for the chance to get a Game Piece awarding one of the prizes from the Instant Win range.
Collect to Win Game for the chance to collect complete MONOPOLY Property Sets to win prizes from the Collect to Win prize-range, with each type of set offering its own prize-type once completed.
Digital Peel Game for the chance to enter a digital, winning-moments game for an award of a prize or reward from the digital Peel range (including the Mayfair Monday game mechanic which is new for 2024). These are the possible instant notification when playing Digital Peel Game:
Cash Peel: a cash prize between £5 and £100.
Community Chest Peel: a non-cash prize from merchandise, food prizes and offers, MyMcDonald’s Rewards points to rare Properties, as detailed in the prize-table in the Rules.
Bank or Swap Peel: award of a commonly found Property. You can either bank it to your wallet, swap it for another commonly found Property (it could be the same one) or swap it for a £100k prize draw entry.
Mayfair Monday Peel: a cash prize of £20k (this peel can only appear on Monday 9th September, Monday 16th September, Monday 23rd September, Monday 30th September and Monday 7th October 2024).
Mr Monopoly Bonus Reward enter 30 Property codes from your game-pieces into the McDonald’s (UK) app this year and you will complete the Mr Monopoly Bonus Reward and receive 1,500 bonus MyMcDonald’s Rewards points.
Just take note, that you can only bank a maximum of 24 Property codes in the app in a day (being any 24 hour period starting from midnight). Oh, and you can only play the Mr Monopoly Bonus Reward game mechanic once throughout the whole campaign.
To help visualise this, I’ve scribbled down some drawings of the players lifecycle.
Consumer facing design and User Experience (UX)
Starting with the campaign's key visual. It clearly has a bold and vibrant new neon and "peel back" style. The typography is strong, but with variation. The red and yellow colours are defiantly on-brand, complimenting both McDonald’s and MONOPOLY’s similar red and yellow.
But... (there is always a but... but not always bad) compared to previous years, the creatives decided to take a more punchy approach for the colour palette. More Virginia Avenue, States Avenue, and St. Charles Place. Less of the historic blue'ie feel of the campaign's key visual, and way, way, more pink - which I really like!
As for the mobile app, the campaign leverages the official McDonald’s U.K app, which means it has nothing really to do with, or related to, Hasbro's Monopoly. For the digital winning mechanics, it looks like the tms digital team have built and embedded an app-separate web experience into a modal body, within the mobile app. Which I fully support, as this keeps the consumers digital experience within the fortress of user sessions and authentication, minimising the risk of promo compers and those who want to try and manipulate the system.
I did find myself opening the experience on my laptop (outside of the app 🙈) and digging around the tmsiwin source code to see how the front-end was built. Needless to say, the tms team had used an array of familiar technologies, such as Cloudflare, Vue, GSAP, PixiJS, Google Fonts, Piwik Pro Analytics (etc). AND, it's all packaged in under 6.5MB of resource. Kudos!
The layout of the mobile experience has been structured in a format that I would have expected to see. It's strong and clear, with primary navigation at the bottom of the page and secondary at the top right side. Perfect for the thumb zone, if you hold you mobile with your right hand.
The mobile design has not been made overly complicated, which is a positive to see. But, in my opinion, it does lack some button prioritisation as a minor point, and colour contrasts for visual accessibility. Especially when you consider that the brand awareness of McDonald’s in the UK sits at 96%, with approximately 43.5 million UK consumers.
For any brand, that's a LOT of eyes!
I would also question some of the copy placement, for example, the notice which tells consumers to keep hold of their games pieces. From my experience designing consumer facing entry campaign for the likes of Lucozade Halo and Ribena Hasbro, this should defiantly be at the top of the page, above the ‘Digital Peel unlocked’ card. This is a vital bit of information which could make or break a consumers ability to claim their prize!!
On a final note, it’s defiantly worth highlighting the very noticeable in-app colour changes when we wake-up on a Mayfair Monday (Oh, hello blue). It creates a strong contrast on the ‘Scan’ button. Really nice!
Conclusion
My short though of it... I LOVE IT! The campaign has been sparked from the obvious pre-successor, but for me, this still beats the rest. I briefly remember my first McDonald MONOPOLY experience, when you only had to be aged 16 or over, and there was no mobile app... the good old days.
The 2024 digital user experience for this campaign has been executed brilliantly, with some minor recommendation for certain item placements. The consumer journey is clear, persist, and doesn't create any blockers when transitioning into the digital space. With a campaign of this size, it's safe to say the expectation from the target audience having a smartphone for app access, is off the table. As of 2023 in the UK, 98% of those aged 16-24 have a smartphone, and 86% of those aged 55-64.
This McDonald's MONOPOLY promotion launched on Wednesday 4th September, and is running for six weeks - ending 15th October 2024. Although to play, you must be aged 18 or over. Which yes, the age requirement can be a head scratcher for most, but if you take the laws around promotions, sweepstakes, gambling, contracts, and marketing/consumer protection, it makes perfect sense.
So, sorry kids (unless, it's your 18th birthday).
Check out the TV advert 👇
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