McDonald’s came up with the marketing campaign I’m Amazing, after a study produced by the brand, discovering that children in Hong Kong spend around five hours per day in private tutoring lessons. This left the fast food giant pondering when and how these children even had time to use their imaginations.
The campaign challenged the kids to use their imaginations by creating their ideal McDonald’s environment. The most compelling of the ideas would then be selected and produced into an actual outpost of the chain.
Using a microsite, the children could select various virtual art supplies to curate their masterpieces, complete with name and age, which would then be submitted and entered into the Ideas Gallery, where users could vote for their favorite drawings, or share them on various social networks. With over 600,000 votes over the course of eleven weeks, the top twenty most popular designs were used to create a new McDonald’s.
After the store was created, the twenty pieces of furniture which were designed from the top drawings were sold at auction, generating $64,500, donated to Ronald McDonald House Charities. The total campaign generated a total of $671,000 of earned media.