McDonald's Kicks the Winning Goal with the Ad Campaign "FryFutbol"

Touted by AdAge as one of the top 5 brand ideas of the week, McDonald's is serving up its famous crunchy french fries re-enacting each of the World Cup matches on YouTube. That's right, short clips, created on an overnight turnaround with the help of Facebook's creative team and VFX experts Framestore, can be seen on a special YouTube stream entitled "FryFutbol." 

But is playing with food an effective sales technique?

Like all smart brands, McDonald's is taking advantage of digital media and posting videos online about its food. Historically, the fast food company has put forth winning brand building strategies with its playful commercials (who could forget the Filet-O-Fish Singing Billy Bass commercial?!). With the move to the online space, the "FryFutbol" campaign is no exception. As a global brand, taking advantage of and aligning oneself with global events, such as the World Cup or the Olympics, is great for building brand reputation and reaching the masses. In our increasingly digital and mobile consumer world, the importance of reaching the masses via those channels is equally, if not more important. The percentage of YouTube traffic seen by mobile is 40% and an astounding 6 billion hours of video content watched per month, the statistics speak for themselves: digital advertising is an area ripe for growth. Despite the opportunities it offers companies to build brand awareness, it is still outperformed by TV advertising which is simply a more mature market. Experts at eMarketer have forecasted that digital video will increase 41.9% this year, reaching $5.96 billion, while TV advertising in the US will grow 3.3% to hit $68.54 billion. TV advertising is still king, but with an increasingly mobile consumer, the need to shift ad spending in the direction of digital may very well be a reality.