McDonalds also goes to the “guerrilla”.

Lately an updated marketing strategy is acquiring new followers, the so-called “Guerrilla Marketing”.

The reason of its spreading is obvious. It makes an outstanding idea inside the consumers about what and how the products are, at the same time it does not imply high and unaffordable costs to the entrepreneurs who are tending to use it. Enormous effects at bargain prices, the success recipe.

For all of that, the American fast-food burger giant, McDonals, has not been able to reject its use and they initiated in 2009 two interesting guerrilla marketing activities for promoting two weeks of free coffee in their establishments:

• 1) First of all, they decided to install machines in some bus stops and advertising panels in order to create an attractive smoke inside. When sporadically some smoke began to pour out of the cup of coffee from the McDonalds brand, which was the poster inside of them, immediately appeared the core sentence; “Your free coffee is ready”

• 2) Also in the same direction, the redesigned some streetlights as huge carafes pouring a cup of coffee, which, by the way, was decorated with the same phrase; “Your free coffee is ready”.

Image source: http://gutenver.wordpress.com/2009/09/21/mcdonald%C2%B4s-cafe-gratis-free-coffee/

• 3) Finally, during the development of this strategy, they created some human size cups of coffee, where the same phrase was again highlighted. What makes it special? The fact that they, as the panels did, were sporadically pouring out some smoke from the McDonald´s cup of coffee. 

Image source: http://timekiller.cz/reklama/top10-guerillovych-kampani-od-mcdonalds/

This campaign was created by the Canadian Cossette company, helped by Dyna Graphics, achieving what McDonalds desired, an original and high effective way of being noticed, as all the guerrilla marketing campaigns try.