When it comes to brand sponsored content, Gennefer Snowfield has her finger on the pulse. Big time. One of the things she’s pointing to today is Dreaming in Mono, a new episodic storytelling project from McDonald’s Nordic region, which includes Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden.
Here’s a teaser:
The first episode of Dreaming in Mono is available on the site. You can also listen to McDonald’s Nordic Marketing Director, Shaun Russell, describe the 750,000 people who eat at a Nordic McDonald’s each day as a media channel. So why not tell this audience a story? One about winter sports, the monoski, in particular?
It’s clear that marketers are asking fundamentally different questions today. Once upon a time, McDonald’s was a fast serve restaurant where a person could dine on the quick and cheap. To some it remains precisely what it was, but maybe Russell is right about our need to devour media along with a meal today. After people receive their food, they’re in need of some sort of entertainment or mental stimulation. Playing promotional games like Monopoly has proven effective in this eat-my-fries space. Getting people to wrap their minds around an episodic adventure that starts in the store but leads to their work or home computer screens and plays out over several weeks is a different beast, for sure.
Time will tell if this kind of episodic storytelling helps build loyalty to the brand, but I like its chances.