Macca’s restaurants around Australia were operating with 59% of roles unfilled. Our brief was to create an influx of young Aussies applying to work at Macca’s to help close this shortfall.
We were participating in the tightest labour market Australia has seen in 50 years (The Guardian 17 November 2022), not to mention competing with other businesses with a lot more social and cultural cred in the eyes of young Aussies - Apple, Hoyts, Grill’d.
Most young Aussies had little desire to work at Macca’s but had a big desire to feel part of a team - something current employees said working at Macca’s has in spades.
That’s why we decided to celebrate the countless little Crew moments of mateship to show young Aussies that working at Macca’s means being a part of the best ‘crew’ in Australia.
We created Mates Make It Macca’s
We launched a fully integrated campaign to celebrate the mateship of Macca’s.
We used three communication pillars to inform messaging and channel selection:
Brand-led - we needed to create an emotional connection to Macca’s that would drive reappraisal amongst the target audiences.
Benefit-led - this layer would communicate the more rational benefits of a job at Macca’s.
Engagement-led - to help engage our audience we created a game that linked to a CTA to capture applications.
Brand-led
The campaign launched with an ad showing Macca’s staff collaborating and connecting at work, with a particular focus on the little friendship moments between crew.
TV was a reach driver with our core audience, but also their parents who remain an important influence on young people's choices. It was also the best channel to help drive overall brand perception and corporate reputation.
At a broadcast level the campaign had spots in both the NRL and AFL Grand Final, and was supported by an outdoor campaign targeted at universities.
Benefit-led pillar
The benefit led pillar ran across key social channels such as YouTube, Tik Tok, snap, and meta.The messaging spoke directly to benefits for anyone's optimal work styles and hours EG; for night owls, early bird, mates wanted, team players etc.
Engagement-led
To help drive appeal, we developed a mobile game called The Macca’s Burger Challenge. The game was a skills and time based challenge to see how quickly players could assemble a burger. This ‘Try before you Fry’ execution gave everyone who played it a CTA at the end of the game to apply based on how quickly they mastered the challenge and their location.
Average applications increased by 40% per day during the campaign period.
Average hires increased by 83% per day during the campaign period and remained higher than the rate of hire before the campaign launch.
347k Aussies played the mobile game, resulting in 50k clicks to Macca’s career website.
366 pieces of earned coverage resulting in 20.7M earned impressions.