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    McDonald's
    Politics
    Programmatic
    Digital
    Media Planning

    McDonald's

    Putting youth opportunity at the centre of Westminster's daily conversation

    McDonald's set out to reframe a familiar political narrative: that young people lack the skills, ambition or experience to lead. With one in three of its UK restaurant managers under the age of 25, the brand had a powerful counter-story to tell, and a clear audience to tell it to. The Youth Opportunity campaign needed to land in front of MPs, advisers, civil servants and the political journalists who shape the national conversation on work, skills and young people.

    MessageSpace planned and executed a targeted campaign across the UK news ecosystem, combining premium political publishers with high-reach programmatic display, audio and LinkedIn. The strategy paired credibility placements in titles MPs actually read with the scale needed to make the message unmissable across Westminster's wider professional audience.

    Premium placements in The Spectator and New Statesman delivered editorial credibility in front of a heavily Westminster-skewed readership. Programmatic display drove scale. Our Spotify audio buy reached almost half a million unique political-podcast listeners with a 96.4% completion rate, closer in attention value to a 30-second TV spot than to a standard display impression. A LinkedIn campaign placed McDonald's in Westminster's professional feed, with official accounts from government departments, including the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Education, engaging directly with the post.

    Key Results

    • 4.7 million impressions delivered across UK news, politics and policy professional audiences
    • LinkedIn delivered the campaign's highest CTR, with engagement from government department accounts including DWP and DfE
    • Programmatic display delivered 3.53 million impressions and 13,221 clicks across 129 news domains, 3.7x benchmark CTR
    • LinkedIn delivered the campaign's highest CTR at 0.64%, with engagement from government department accounts including DWP and DfE
    • Spotify political-podcast buy returned a 96.4% completion rate across 519,900 impressions and 448,326 unique listeners
    • Premium placements in The Spectator and New Statesman delivered to plan in front of a Westminster-skewed readership