McDonald’s GOL! App Turns Its Fries Into An Augmented Reality World Cup Game

The FIFA World Cup kicks off in Brazil next week, but McDonald’s has given soccer fans around the world a way to get in on the action right now.

As part of their global sponsorship of the FIFA World Cup, McDonald’s changed the red packaging of its fries. Working with The Marketing Store, DDB Chicago helped create 12 new packaging designs – each representing a different artist’s passion for the world’s biggest soccer tournament.

DDB Chicago used the packaging as a mechanism to launch McDonald’s customers into a new digital app experience called McDonald’s GOL!. The app is downloadable from gol.mcd.com.

McDonald’s GOL! is an augmented reality app that is triggered from any of the 12 FIFA World Cup fry boxes. To play the game, app users must purchase fries to get a FIFA World Cup fry box. Upon scanning a box, players enter a soccer trick shot game in which they shoot, bounce, flick and kick their way to World Cup success.

The game includes Qualcomm’s Vuforia augmented reality technology which allows game players to bounce a digital soccer ball off their own real world items — meaning every player experiences an entirely unique game.

The game also gives players the chance to win and share badges, share their best goals via social networks, keep up with the latest news from the FIFA World Cup and show their skills for their own country.

To promote the app, DDB Chicago, in addition to a short game demo video,  created a longer crazy video showing everyday people displaying their amazing skills kicking a soccer ball into people’s houses, into a wastebasket on a moving escalator, off a bell atop a church, around a city while wearing heels and a mini-dress, along the seashore by a man in a wheelchair, up over a bridge from a moving truck and back into a barrel on that moving truck and more.

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Steve Hall

Steve Hall is a marketing professional, publisher, writer, community manager, photographer and all-around lover of advertising.