McDonald’s decodes promotional versus commerce global mobile app strategy

thedrum.com

McDonald’s decodes promotional versus commerce global mobile app

McDonald’s much anticipated global mobile app goes live this summer though will not have all its features open to users in an attempt to work out whether its focus is mainly promotional or commerce.

The restaurant has been scrambling to get its marketing ship shape over the last 18 months and the app’s imminent arrival will mark its bow as a digital marketer. While it has dedicated significant resources to catch up in the digital arms race, the company will bide its time with the app’s rollout in order to pull away from the pack.

McDonald’s coyness stems from the need to balance the app’s promotional and commerce functions in each market. Should it push music through the app? Or should it be used for ordering and loyalty initiatives? These are the questions the restaurant is grappling with as its summer launch date gets closer.

Pete Bensen, chief administrative officer at McDonald’s, told delegates at the UBS Global Consumer Conference yesterday (6 March), that the app would initially focus more on some of the promotional aspects of the app and that a country’s priorities will “determine which pieces of the app they turn on at all”. This is in part due to the learnings gleaned from app trials in the US and Europe over the last year.

The fast food chain has only offered morsels of information on the global app’s features since its announcement last November but has repeatedly talked up the importance of mobile’s role in its fast-evolving strategy to offer customers greater flexibility and services. Findings from the app could potentially be used for a coffee loyalty program.

Bensen said: “We think about the digital app, if you will, on two tracks, that experience piece and engagement piece. So think about the experience piece as the restaurant locator, the order and pay kind of functional aspects. We think about it on those two tracks by the mid-year we will have the first global app that is released in the McDonald's system, different countries are going to pick that up in different places.

“It's very important for us to leverage that investment that we've made in the restaurants around the world, so then integrate [the app] more easily and also as I said separate, that kind of experienced piece from the engagement piece and try to be a little bit more proprietary in that regard.”

The app will evolve into a core pillar of McDonald’s $100m attempt in 2015 to digitise the restaurant experience. iPad-like self order kiosks, Apple Pay and mobile and web ordering are just some of the features being introduced to encourage people to keep coming back to its stores. The business hired R/GA London at the turn of the year tohelp feed the strategy.

McDonald’s can also call on the expertise of former Google Americas boss Margo Georgiadis who was appointed to its board of directors last month. The hire is part of a shake-up at the restaurant that saw longime president Don Thompson replaced by marketer SteveEasterbrook. He is set to continue the company’s five-pronged marketing plan around insights, value, modernisation, quality and innovation