Baseball can be unpredictable.
The timing surrounding Bernstein-Rein’s campaign promoting a local McDonald’s promotion offering a one dollar McDouble sandwich following games in which the Kansas City Royals turned a double play would appear to be less than ideal. While it’s not unusual for a team to a turn double during a loss, the spot in question showed a young fan not changing his shirt, or his preferred fast food stop with mom, because, “You don’t mess with a streak.”
The problem? It ran during a prolonged losing streak for the Royals, who dropped nine straight games.
Fans took notice as the spot ran consistently in local markets and a more than a few of them blamed Bobby, who in term blamed his mom. To be fair, she was the one who suggested wearing the shirt.
— McDonald’s KC (@KCMcDonalds) May 3, 2017
As fans continued to interact with the account, Bernstein-Rein ran with it, playing up Bobby’s role in the losing streak — and his need for a new Royals shirt and using it as a way to engage with Royals fans on social media. The agency’s handling of the social account seems to have panned out, with a large increase in the brand’s number of followers on Twitter and increased awareness of the promotion.
“The double play is a big moment during a game and we thought it would be fun to have McDonald’s do something to acknowledge it. The McDouble Sandwich was the obvious menu item to tie into this promotion,” Bernstein-Rein chief creative officer Lara Wycoff explained in a statement. “Our social team took it to another level as the social conversations around the promotion and the streak took off. We even took a still of Bobby from the commercial and retooled his t-shirt to read ‘finally,’ when the team finally won a game.”
— McDonald’s KC (@KCMcDonalds) May 2, 2017