Life in the fastfood lane: Experiencing Mc Donald's, Burger King, Pizza Hut, HRC

Who says it is only brands with products to sell who use experiential as a means to engage their target audiences? In the dynamic marketing environment today even service providers and restaurants can be easily spotted constantly using varied and immersive experiences to establish connection with their target customers.

Case in point, the multinational food giants like Pizza Hut, McDonalds, Hard Rock Café and Burger King. All of these food outlets are somewhere down the line competing for the same set of target audience and hence in order to race ahead each other have time n again come up thoroughly engaging experiential campaigns.

So if you are wondering which food giant has an upper head in terms of experiential campaigns? Well, you are in luck as we at EE this time, deep dive into the experiential campaigns of these giants to provide you with an exclusive insight on who does experiential better?

To start off McDonalds has been one of the most pro-active food brands when it comes to experiential. The fast food giant has come up with multiple experience driven campaigns across the globe. From enabling customers to play games on public billboards to promoting a no littering ideology through ‘kick the trash’ campaign and from launching an outdoor breakfast campaign in UAE to launching a Piccadilly circus campaign in London, McDonalds has constantly and consistently used experiential as an important aspect of its overall marketing strategy.

Interestingly, even though the food giant invests a lot of money into the execution of these experiential campaigns, however most of them are based on similar lines of using digital as the only interactive element for most of its campaigns. Additionally, McDonalds is not widely known to tell a story with its experiential campaigns as a majority of them feature the target customers having fun with the brand rather than establishing an emotional or sentimental connection.

Have a look at some of its most applauded experiential campaigns

Burger King on the other hand, which stands as a direct competitor to McDonalds can be said to be weaving the aspect of storytelling into all of its experiential campaigns.

Be it creating a Statue of Liberty Time Lapse moment for its customers or the Burger King Motel case where it asked foodies to cheat on its famous whooper burger and try on the newly launched chicken burger, Burger King always has a message embedded in all its experiential efforts.
It recently was also awarded the coveted Cannes Lions for its ‘We are all the same inside’ campaign, where the food giant supported and advocated the agenda of LGBT rights.

Clearly between Mcdonalds and Burger King the experiential efforts of the latter are more thought provoking and are likely to stay in a consumers mind for a more prolonged period of time.

Moving on to the food giant which is famous for introducing the word, foodgasm in the universe, i.e. Pizza Hut. Pizza Hut as a multinational food giant has though invested in experiential but experience driven campaigns have not been a key contributor to its overall marketing agenda across the world.

The brand has often come up with campaigns like engaging gamers in a retro arcade, in store activities during its ‘taste freedom’ campaign which was executed in 28 locations in the UK and others. However, the food giant mainly uses ATL as a primary technique to connect with its consumers and is yet to make a substantial effort in the experiential space.

The last remembered globally successful experiential initiative run by the brand was in 2010, where Pizza Hut made its staff ‘the star of its brand’. The campaign was centered around a beautiful message and used mediums of ATL and BTL to promote itself heavily. But Pizza Hut has not been successful in coming up with a hugely successful experiential initiative anytime after that.

Clearly, the brand believes that ATL is still the way to go as far as promoting the sales of the brand is concerned.

Hard Rock Café on the other hand is one of the most evolving, attracting and engaging fast food giants which thrive on experiences. From organizing Comedy nights in countries to music fiestas in others and from establishing a successful souvenir line for its customers to having a special Hard Rock Café outlet in every country that the giant operates in, Hard Rock Café has been constantly involved in coming up with initiatives one after the other to make sure it has new experiences to share every time a customer walks in.

Though India as a country sees less of experiential by these fast food multinationals however the Hard Rock Café outlets in the country are always on the verge of curating different experiences. Be it celebrating EMD festivals to the season of cricket, or bringing Puddle of Mud to India to coming up with India’s first ever Mojito festival, Hard Rock Café has done it all.

Though there is less of innovation involved and no storytelling present. However, Hard Rock Café manages to charm its audiences better than other food giants simply on the basis of something new being served in terms of experiences to its target customers. Undoubtedly, experiential sits high for the Hard Rock Café as far as their marketing initiatives across the globe are concerned. And why wouldn’t it? Isn’t it a good experience that truly matters at the end of the day?