McDonald’s Monopoly is one of the brand’s biggest promotional events of the year and has become synonymous with that winning feeling, in 2018 it returned to Ireland for the third year running, giving away over 12 million prizes in the UK and ROI.
But its ubiquity also meant the campaign risked feeling routine rather than unmissable. The strategic challenge was to freshen the game’s visual identity and narrative to reignite excitement, deepen emotional engagement, and make the promotion a cultural moment that drove both footfall and brand affinity throughout its six‑week run.
The Audience
The campaign needed to resonate with core McDonald’s customers who know and love the game, as well as casual visitors enticed by the thrill of winning. This included habitual players who enjoy the peel‑and‑play mechanic, prize hunters drawn to big wins, and social audiences who share game moments online — all of whom respond strongly to playful, rewarding experiences.
The Insight
People don’t just play Monopoly for the prizes — they play for the feeling of chance, community buzz, and the joy of the game itself. Realising that the promotion could be more than a transactional mechanic, the strategy leaned into the emotion of winning and communal play by refreshing the campaign’s narrative and visual identity to feel joyful, celebratory, and shareable. This made the game feel less like a promotion and more like a nationwide experience, sparking conversations in homes, workplaces, and on social media throughout its run.
Monopoly created a buzz. For 6 weeks, it became a conversation piece around coffee machines, in homes and on social media across the nation. The reimagined campaign successfully drove measurable engagement and sales impact. The campaign got people into McDonald’s in their thousands, smashing sales targets and reaching guest count highs. The refreshed identity helped by increasing brand affinity and making Monopoly one of the favourite customer experiences of the year. Industry tracking also showed a meaningful uplift in participation, making this iteration one of the most talked‑about versions of the promotion.
Whilst working on Monopoly for Ireland I also created the Team Edition campaign for the McDonald’s staff. Monopoly is a highlight of the McDonald’s UK calendar and a very busy period for every restaurant. Employees are under pressure during this period with big uplifts in customers and them needing to be armed with the answers to customers’ queries about the campaign. Team Edition is a way of rewarding the hard-working staff as well as ensuring they don’t play the main game meant for the public.
In 2018 we really simplified the game mechanic and saw a +67.5% uplift in players, with over 46,000
employees playing and over 31,000 playing all four weeks of the campaign.
