New York State Thruway McDonald’s® Restaurants

Client Overview

The New York State Thruway McDonald’s® Restaurants are dedicated to providing commuters and tourists who travel the New York State Thruway a safe, clean, and friendly environment, and offer a variety of foods and beverages as they travel throughout New York State.

Client’s Challenge

Due to higher real estate rental fees at these NYS Thruway locations, these restaurants have smaller menus at higher prices than your typical neighborhood McDonald’s®. They are also unable to participate in special offers that are advertised on a national level.

In general, these franchise owners find that national advertising does not help them reach their market, which is commuters, vacationers, and most importantly, bus drivers.

Also, due to their locations, which are scattered up and down the NYS Thruway and intermingled with rest areas hosting competitive restaurants, it is often the case that travelers stop at a specific rest area due to convenience and not necessarily to visit a specific restaurant.

The BBG&G Assessment

The agency identified what was lacking:  incentive and location branding.

1. An incentive for travelers to intentionally choose the rest areas boasting McDonald’s® locations over their competition. This had to be something compelling enough to persuade people to set convenience aside and make the deliberate choice to stop a little sooner or push a little further than they might have originally done, in order to visit one of the 11 participating McDonald’s® restaurants.
2. And branding to easily distinguish these McDonald’s® rest areas over their competition.

The BBG&G Solution

A sweepstakes program promoting McDonald’s® restaurants along the NYS Thruway and utilizing the fact that New York State is an excellent weekend getaway destination.

The program, entitled “The Better Getaway Sweepstakes”, offers customers the chance to enter to win a grand prize of $10,000 or first and second prizes of weekend getaway packages at two beautiful family resorts in New York State.

With the solid branding of McDonald’s® behind us, a “Better Getaway” logo was developed, which incorporated the golden arches logo.

With a fairly moderate budget, an integrated marketing campaign was developed targeting bus drivers, which consisted of paycheck inserts, bus garage posters, restaurant signage, a web site, and print advertising. Vacationers and commuters were reached through sweepstakes cards with a map clearly outlining the participating Thruway locations, the web site, on-site signage, and PR activities.

The COMPONENTS

Sweepstakes Conceptual Development
Sweepstakes Logo Development
Arranging Sweepstakes Destinations
Planning and Execution of Entire Campaign
Web Site
Print Advertising
Sweepstakes Entry Cards
Bus Garage Posters
Bus Driver Paycheck Inserts
Public Relations
Market Research
In-Restaurant Signage
Drive-Thru Signage

The Results

The sweepstakes brought in over 6,000 entries, which was well above the projected participation. The objective of the campaign was to increase sales at these restaurant locations and to steal market share. Beginning the campaign in the last quarter of 2005 and ending towards the end of the first quarter of 2006, we’ve compared the first quarter ’06 results with that of first quarter ’05 to evaluate the Return on Objective of the campaign.

While McDonald’s® increased sales 4.4% over their first quarter 2005 sales, it also increased its market share in the first quarter by .81%! The Return on Objective was met and the client was very pleased with the overall results of the campaign.