Monopoly at McDonald’s
Packaging / Digital / Promotion
During the summer of 2014, The Marketing Store brought me on as a freelancer (for the first of three times) to be the voice of the world’s biggest promotion: Monopoly at McDonald’s.
Having never worked at an agency that was responsible for the entirety of a promotion from ideation through execution and redemption, I had no idea what I was in for. It turns out I’d play an absolutely critical role in the success of the promotion as the only individual to be involved first-hand with both packaging and digital portions of the game (a role I would reprise in 2018).
The 2014 game also introduced the ability to track Monopoly Game Stamps for the first time, adding an extra wrinkle to the already intricate mix.
Four months, dozens of discussions with legal over headlines, 40+ different pieces of packaging, 100+ web pages, and more-than-a-few gray hairs later, my work was done.
The Work
The promotion site is only live for 6 months, but you can see every page of it in this video if you so choose.
Every prize was listed on the site, so I needed to come up with 20 unique descriptions all embedded with the “element of chance.”
On the How to Play section of the site, each Game-Stamp-laden package had a subhead, but this—by far—was the best one. My Swan Song; my Easter Egg; my Coup De Grâce: Whatever you want to call it, getting this line through made it worth all the stress.
The family of McDonald’s Monopoly packaging with various levels of copy on them.
21oz cups featured individual prize partners.
Getting headlines to pass the rigorous trademark standards of McDonald’s AND The Marketing Store is a lot more difficult than you’d think.
Bags had featured prizes on the fronts and backs, as well as a listing of all the prize partners on the gussets (sides).