The whole world has gone into hiatus ever since the Coronavirus pandemic had spread. It became not hard to notice that most of the industries that keep the market going, suffer from paralysis.
Since COVID-19 is spreading through droplets that could exist on any surface, people were advised of serious precautions including staying home; therefore, some industries that depended on social gatherings are the ones that suffer the most, including the Food industry.
How the Food Industry Is Slowing Down!
Due to the rapid spreading of Coronavirus, people were advised to stay home, to keep a distance between each other and the government imposed a curfew. Restaurants were affected negatively by this as a lot of them had either to shut down or to only deliver food.
However, delivery is not a solution neither, people are so afraid of the infection that they are avoiding ordering food because they don’t know if it was touched by someone infected.
We have witnessed a lot of brands offering free delivery and a lot of people posting photos of their favorite junk food stating how much they miss it. One of the brands people posted a lot about it is McDonald’s; people posted about how much they miss their Big Tasty and their fries, which led to one cool campaign from McDonald’s.
TikTok Marketing: Utilizing Trends To Your Brand Benefit
Since all people are in quarantine for almost a month now, they headed to social media platforms to keep them entertained. One platform proved its success more than others is TikTok.
TikTok has been attracting many users especially since the quarantine started; according to the statistics, in March 2020, TikTok was downloaded more than 115 million times worldwide. It is, in fact, number one in the downloaded non-game applications list.
One of the trending topics these days is Khaled Mokhtar. For those who don’t know who Khaled Mokhtar is, he is a social media influencer and the founder of the popular Facebook page “Tamat Al-Targama”.
Mokhtar is gifted with a great sense of humor and a creative mind; recently he released a series of videos and sarcastic tracks that went viral and were used as memes. One of the videos that went viral is called “3ayez Batates” “I want fries”; the video’s content consisted of Mokhtar singing that he wants fries.
The video starts with Mokhtar calling a restaurant refusing all the food and stating that he just wants fries “3ayez Batates”; he ended the video with a dance and a jump in a McDonald’s fries pack.
@khaledmokhtar
The track grabbed people’s attention and started to lip-sync to it on TikTok using the Hashtag #عايز_بطاطس
McDonald’s later replied to Mokhtar saying that they will send him fries and created a campaign out of his video.
TikTok + Khaled Mokhtar = “3ayez Batates” Campaign
The brand has been posting on their page that they are following the precautions and the first hand to touch the food is the customer’s hands, but that wasn’t all.
McDonald’s planned a smart campaign to draw people’s attention once more to their food and their delicious fries. The campaign started with Khaled Mokhtar wanting fries and had almost 7000 people using the song on TikTok expressing that they too want fries.
@mcdonaldsegypt الكل عايز بطاطس مش بس @khaledmokhtar #عايز_بطاطس
McDonald’s used TikTok and Khaled Mokhtar and invited more people to join the platform to follow their account and dance on Mokhtar’s song in their way to have a chance to win free fries every day till the 23rd of April, which led to the 7,000 people joining in less than a 10 days to win.
@mcdonaldsegypt صور أغنية عايز بطاطس بفرايز ماكدونالدز وممكن تكسب فرايز هدية كل يوم لحد يوم ٢٣ أبريل من على mcdelivery.eg 🍟*تطبق الشروط والأحكام
@3afy_met3afy_3abshafy
@nouurehabb1 ده حالنا في الQuarantine كلنا عايزين بطاطس 🍟 #عايز_بطاطس @mcdonaldsegypt
The brand used very successful elements to create a campaign, it benefited from the popularity of TikTok, Khaled Mokhtar and the virality of his tracks and created one successful campaign.
We have to admit that McDonald’s nailed this one as they grabbed people’s attention and distracted us from the recent tragic events for a while.
