“Flavor, Inspired”

Independent full-service advertising and marketing agency H/L Agency has launched a social campaign for McDonald’s, designed to promote the quick-service restaurant chain’s McCafé All-New Drinks. By creatively integrating a holistic influencer marketing approach, H/L engages with trends and sparks consistent waves of inspiration through phased activations to drive genuine User-Generated Content (UGC) for “Flavor, Inspired.”

“Flavor, Inspired” kicks off this May with PR Boxes for influencers. The boxes are designed to emulate the look of a McCafé Specialty Beverage on the outside and include items like a white tumbler featuring the emerging trend of customizing the tumbler with themed stickers, a McDonald’s logo straw topper, and a gift card for creators to taste the new drinks during their unboxings. With the second wave engaging local creators in June, this stage of the influencer marketing funnel is set to generate buzz as the first phase of “Flavor, Inspired” and spark conversation. Harnessing raw responses from audiences and creators will optimize the rest of the rollout, which will last through the fall.

Following the local influencer stage, the “Flavor, Inspired” campaign will include a partnership with an iconic musician—to be revealed at a later date—who will mix their music with the flavors of McCafé All-New Drinks to create an experience all its own and drive mass engagement in the height of summer. From there, more influencers from various regions will join in posting UGC, all while being supported by area McDonald’s restaurants, ensuring alignment through retail and encouraging employee engagement.

Austin Price, Social Media Director at H/L, says of the campaign, “McDonald’s has been a long-time client of ours, and we’re always excited to find new ways to engage its loyal fanbase. At H/L, especially with influencer marketing, we always strive for realness—you can smell a scripted moment a mile away, and audiences pick up on that. This campaign was brought to life through a multidisciplinary effort across H/L to make this a true social-first integrated marketing campaign. We developed these boxes to be actually exciting and will hopefully prompt some very fun unboxings. I look forward to seeing the rest of this campaign unfold!”