The Challenge
McDonald’s is the biggest fast-food restaurant in Sweden. Since 2018 the local communication concept is "Big enough to make a difference" which is based on using the McDonald's scale to make a positive impact on society. In 2021, McDonald's began a collaboration with The Keep Sweden Tidy Foundation, a non-profit organization that promotes recycling and works to reduce littering. The collaboration revolves around joint projects that aim to reduce littering, something which is both harmful to the environment and costs society large sums each year.
The Solution
Take away packaging often ends up on the streets and in and around parks in urban areas. Since 2021, McDonald's Sweden has established a strategic partnership with the Keep Sweden Tidy Foundation. It has resulted in initiatives involving both staff and guests to make a joint effort to keep litter off the streets. This year, we took the collaboration one step further with Deal With The Trash. A campaign which rewarded people with deals at McDonald's when they binned their take away packaging. All they had to do was to prove their good deed in the McDonald's app using a tool that was trained to recognize all McDonald's packaging and public bins as well as... all packaging from our two main competitors. Deal With The Trash changed consumer behavior, drove short term sales and made more people see McDonald's as a responsible brand.