McCafé launched today a virtual McCafé advent calendar – a special calendar used to count the days of Advent in anticipation of Christmas. The calendar is a location-based marketing campaign using Facebook Places. Based on McCaféʻs central idea “Alles Gute beginnt mit einem guten Kaffee” (Everything good starts with a good cup of coffee) the campaign rewards McCafé guests in Germany with digital gifts that change every day.

The campaign has been made possible with a location-based service developed by TBWAʻs Digital Arts team in Berlin. The web-service unloqable® makes content available only to users who prove their location via a smartphone or a location-based service like Facebook or Foursquare.

McCafé is the the first brand to use unloqable® as part of its marketing activities. Starting today, all McCafé guests checking with Facebook places in one of over 700 McCafés in Germany will be rewarded with free downloadable digital gifts like animations, films or music.

Unloqable® is a web-service that offers location-based accessibility of digital content (music, pics, coupons, codes, etc). The objective is to make this content available only to users who can prove their location via a smart phone or a location-based service like Facebook Places or Foursquare.

Digital content is stored on the Unloqable® server with a web based management tool. The management tool is the heart of Unloqable®: it offers the possibility to set up campaigns, to edit existing campaigns or to evaluate campaigns from a statistical point of view.

In addition to simply setting up a campaign using the combination of a digital content with a geo-data, there is also the possibility to constrain the campaign time or quota basis. For example, some content can be rendered “Exclusive” and accessible only for a specific number of times before expiring.

Users are notified about the existence of a campaign either actively – in nearly real-time by so-called “Checkins” – or passively via e-mail, fan-pages or ads.

The notification contains a link to digital content that has to be unlocked through one of the above-mentioned mechanisms.

Whether you’re cheering, crying, jumping for joy or doing the Mexican Wave, supporting your nation’s team during the World Cup consumes a lot of energy. In order to stay in peak supporting condition, you need a bite from time to time. Which is why McDonald’s – the official FIFA fan food – came up with the entirely relevant idea: “Feed the passion.”

With the help of TBWA, McDonald’s set out to disrupt the conventions of sponsorship communications. Rather than plastering the stadium with logos, it chose to address fans directly in a highly contextual manner.

Posters set the scene for the pan-European campaign. Showing a massive Mexican wave by supporters dressed in the brand’s gold livery, they carried the line: “Cheering takes a lot of energy: Feed the Passion.”

Soon after that, the fun and games began.

To entertain fans and stimulate conversations, McDonald’s and its agency decided to run newspaper ads commenting on each match. Obviously they couldn’t create the ads at the last minute. But how could they predict the outcome of each match?

Answer: they couldn’t. The agency created hundreds of ads in advance, predicting many possible results. This was pure Media Arts dedication.

Things kicked off gently enough, with ads that were trailers for coming clashes, such as “Italy v. Paraguay? They’ll be hungry for a result.” Or “Portugal v. Brazil? Classics don’t come much bigger than this.” (Alongside an image of a Big Mac, naturally.)

But the campaign moved into high gear when the ads were able to capture the full drama and unpredictability of soccer. How about the moment when the Netherlands took on favourites Brazil – and won? An ad the following morning commented: “Netherlands 2, Brazil 1. That’s a tasty finish.”

The executions showed a relish for visual puns. Accompanying an image of a milkshake: “France 1. Africa 2. That’ll shake up the group.” Or with a picture of a cup of coffee: “Slovenia 0, England 1. It’s a real ground out result.” The words amusingly summed up the gruelling match fans had sweated through the night before.

The magic of the campaign lay in its being able to comment on victories and defeats almost in real time. Serbia asked their fans how good it felt to beat the Germans 1:0 (the score was spelled out in fries and a couple of blobs of ketchup); France’s disastrous showing was rewarded with an image of a McDonald’s dessert – a sweet cure for the post-match blues.

Even countries that had not qualified were able to join in the fun. Ireland had been eliminated thanks to a notorious “hand-ball” by France’s Thierry Henry. So when France went out of the tournament, the Irish papers contained this ad: “French fries.” Other non-qualifying countries asked themselves questions such as “Who says we still can’t lift the cup?” or pledged to keep the faith until 2014.

Nearly every aspect of victory and loss was addressed. When Germans woke the morning after celebrating a 4:0 victory over Argentina, McDonald’s suggested a hangover cure.

And then, of course, came the final. Spain asked their fans to show pride in their colours, which neatly mimicked those of McDonald’s! The last ad in the campaign read: “Jump, jump and then jump some more. Congratulations Spain.” The image? An empty carton of fries, its contents scattered all around.

RESULTS

This was a campaign shaped by the World Cup itself. It fused a relevant idea with contextual advertising to speak to and involve the fans. All in all, 25 countries participated. Hundreds of ads were published, millions Macs were sold and many more fans participated.

And the campaign proved that even in media as traditional as newspapers, a disruptive idea and Media Arts skills score big with the public.

For any comments or suggestions, send an email to Ulrich Proeschel.