Hey, Ryan here with this week's Marketing Breadcrumbs.

Here's what I've got for you:

• McDonald's Boosts Mobile App Usage With Brilliant "Three Fries" Campaign

• Hilarious LEGO Ads To Promote Imaginative Builders of Tomorrow

McDonald's Boosts Mobile App Usage With Brilliant "Three Fries" Campaign

In 2021, McDonald's found a creative way to raise awareness and increase usage of its My McDonald's mobile app. The idea was to release a limited-time offer exclusively through the app.

But here's the twist:

This exclusive offer wasn't an ordinary food item. It was a miniature container with just 3 french fries in it.

The idea was that you could give your friend this mini-fry container to prevent them from snatching a few fries from your bag. It's a silly idea that gave their customers a few laughs.

Importantly:

The free "Three Fries" promotion generated tens of thousands of offer redemptions and millions of impressions on social media. The campaign even achieved a 13% average engagement rate, the highest ever for the brand's social content at the time.

Talk about a creative way of boosting your app!

Here's what most companies might have done:

Many companies might have had a similar idea to offer an exclusive menu item as a reward for using the mobile app. This is a basic incentive strategy but likely would have yielded some results.

Here's why I think the "Three Fries" idea was even better:

First, it created a fun and memorable experience that might reinforce the customer's affinity to the McDonald's brand in the future.

Second, it created an experience that was irresistable for customers to share on social media, increasing word of mouth for the mobile app.

Hilarious LEGO Ads To Promote Imaginative Builders of Tomorrow​

The LEGO builders of tomorrow campaign launched in 2006 to inspire kids to become builders and to start a discussion with parents about the importance of imaginative play.

The campaign was built around a Builders of Tomorrow website where child development experts and celebrities published helpful parenting content.

But my favorite component of this campaign was its ad creative, which showed awe-inspired parents watching their child use LEGO to build an impressive device of some sort.

Like this one, where the child builds a cellphone:

Or this one, where the child build a wind turbine:

This one might be the most attention-grabbing of all, showing kids literally as the builders of tomorrow as they sit on a crane:

The creative is a great example to model. You create a short tagline ("Builders of Tomorrow") that examplifies the benefit of using your product (i.e. kids develop useful building skills). You then find either literal (i.e. the crane ad) or exaggerative (i.e. the wind turbine ad) ways to visually communicate this message.