KidScreen Magazine | McDonald’s is Lovin’ Custom Content

Ottawa, Canada’s Fuel Industries has spent the past eight years creating international, interactive, viral campaigns for big-name brands such as Panasonic and the Gap. And thanks to a ground-breaking deal with McDonald’s Global for the first-ever digital Happy Meal promo, the 100-employee agency is putting that net-savvy to work for itself and blurring that ever-thinning line between advertising and content creation.

McDonald’s outlets in 40 European markets, covering 11 languages, are in the process of handing out some 30 million Happy Meal CD-ROM premiums sporting the Fairies & Dragons characters and corresponding casual games designed and executed by Fuel. For McDonald’s, the promo marks its foray into the digital space. To be sure, the fast-food giant isn’t eschewing a physical premium. Boys and girls will receive one of four Fairies or Dragons toys with the Happy Meal, but the difference is the Fairies are perched on plastic clamshell CD cases, while the Dragons’ “eggs” hatch to reveal the CD-ROMs. And like many web/toy hybrids launched in the last year, the real interaction with the promo begins when kids pop those disks into their home computers and find that their given Fairy or Dragon is sitting on their monitor’s desktop waiting to be fed, nurtured and played with.

(Full Story: KidScreen Magazine | McDonald’s is Lovin’ Custom Content