McDonald’s puts state sites on the map.
McDonald’s has served up a handful of state-specific Web sites to test consumers’ appetite for more.
The first two, McMinnesota.com and McWisconsin.com, bowed in late August with employment information, a statewide restaurant locator, and a match-and-win sweepstakes. (McTexas bowed in mid-September with no sweeps; sites for Kansas, Illinois, and Michigan launched in early October.)
The identical sites are run by local co-ops under direction from McDonald’s Corp.’s Midwest division, which oversees 54 co-ops in 16 states. McD’s four other regional divisions are expected to launch sites as early as this year as “McState.com” goes national. Some sites, like the Kansas one, launched with no promotion so McD Midwest could test how well promos drive site traffic.
The Owner Operators of McDonald’s Twin Cities Co-op, St. Louis Park, MN, runs Minnesota and Wisconsin. The sites’ Log On Code Game ran through September, with coded gamepieces on fry boxes and hash brown wrappers. Players visited the Web site to type in their on-pack code and see what they won. Prizes included a Hyundai Santa Fe (from Twin Cities Hyundai), Mexican vacation packages (from Sun Country Airlines), Gateway computers, and Minnesota Wild hockey packages.
Each two-part gamepiece also carried an instant-win prize of free or discounted food, or discounts from local retailers including Mills Fleet Farm (general merchandise) and Valvoline. Gamepieces were distributed only in Minnesota and Wisconsin, although the sweeps was also open to residents of neighboring states North Dakota, South Dakota, and Iowa.
McMinnesota.com and McWisconsin.com also carry information on current promos, events like Sue T-Rex’s visit to the Minnesota Science Museum this month (McDonald’s is corporate sponsor of the tour through Chicago’s Field Museum), new menu items, and information on Ronald McDonald House.
The sites are new territory for Big Mac, which set up regional divisions in 1998 to give franchisees more say in their promotion calendars. It’s also part of an aggressive online push for the chain, whose other sites include HugeM.com (which offers wallpaper of French fries and burgers) and Spanish/English LoMcxmo.com, which celebrates Latino culture including science, art, and literature. McD is expanding LoMcximo.com into an Hispanic portal with product-branded games and other multimedia, multi-lingual content. Fusion Networks, Columbia, MD, licenses its software and creates games for the site.
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