#RaiseYourArches, the data behind the success

McDonalds Raise Your Arches campaign photo

In our previous article we reviewed the creator strategy driving the McDonald’s #RaiseYourArches campaigns remarkable success on social media – and there wasn’t a Big Mac in sight. 

By using a smart combination of niche (micro and mid-tier) and mass market (macro and mega) influencers, McDonald’s saw their recent #RaiseYourArches campaign rise to success across a wide spectrum of communities on social media.

In this follow-up article we take a deeper dive into the data from the creators’ social content, evaluating their performance and identifying key trends across the campaign – all captured via Dyzio’s automated campaign tracking and reporting platform.

Diving into the data 

Dyzio captured a total of 23 Instagram Reels and TikTok videos posted by influencers partnered with McDonald’s. This includes mega-influencers like Joey Essex, Chris Hughes and Sam Thompson and a range of micro-influencers including Dane Pemberton, Ollie Eats and Kitchen with Cumbers

Across Instagram and TikTok combined, these influencers #RaiseYourArches content generated an amazing… 

  • 5.3M views
  • 4.4M impressions
  • 317K engagements (like + comments)

Analysing the impact of a diverse creator strategy

With such a wide range of creators engaged with this campaign, it’s possible to evaluate success in a number of different ways. McDonald’s data-led objectives could have been mass-market reach, high engagement in the content, or working with creators who deliver a strong return-on-investment (e.g. based on what they were paid).

In this article we evaluate the performance of a selection of influencers who worked on this campaign, and analyse their impact in relation to the different objectives outlined above. We wanted to understand how their relative size impacts each objective and how this might inform strategic decisions in the future.

Influencer Strategy 1: Delivering engagement in your campaign 

By analysing the #RaiseYourArches campaign report generated by Dyzio, we identified the top 10 highest performing influencers, based on their engagement rate. 

Micro-influencers @Danepemberton, @Kitchenwithcumbers and @Cristinaastyles have performed well with the top three highest engagement rates, which could be attributed to them all having a smaller (niche) and highly engaged following. Their audience size ranges between 20,000 – 35,000.  

Working with micro-influencers is more cost effective and enables brands to tap into smaller and more engaged communities. In the #RaiseYourArches campaign the micro-influencers created amazing content that inspired their audience to like, share and comment. 

In the table below, data from Dyzio highlights the average benchmark engagement rate for a number of creators and compares this to the engagement rate recorded for their #RaiseYourArches social content. It’s expected that micro-influencers will have a higher engagement rate than larger influencers, but in this campaign micro influencers also outperformed their benchmark engagement rate – with the opposite trend being seen for the larger / more famous influencers on this campaign.

CreatorFollower CountBenchmark E.R Campaign E.RTotal Engagements
@Danepemberton32.3K2.8%8.5%91,645
@Joeyessex1.8M1.5%0.6%28,138
@kitchenwithcumbers21.7K3.0%4.11%894
@samthompson1.6M3.2%0.85%13,948
@sophiehannah1.5M1.24%1.06%16,820

If driving conversations and engaging with highly targeted audiences is your primary goal, working with a large number or micro-influencers is the most appropriate strategy.

Influencer Strategy 2: Building awareness – size does matter

Engagements and percentage engagement rates are important metrics for a lot of brands running influencer marketing campaigns, but it’s not always the #1 goal for marketers. Companies whose objective is to increase their brand awareness need to ensure their content and campaigns are seen by as many of their target audience as possible. In the #RasieYourArches campaign McDonald’s collaborated with a number of major UK based influencers, that have a strong and active follower base. This enabled McDonald’s to maximise the reach of the campaign within their key demographics.

Dyzio analysed the influencers who delivered the highest total reach and impressions during the campaign. The top three influencers were as follows: 

  1. Sam Thompson reached a total of 1,348,232 followers, delivering 1,593,365 impressions.
  2. Chris Hughes reached 463,000 followers, delivering 547,000 impressions.
  3. Joey Essex reached 381,000 followers, delivering 450,700 impressions.

These top three influencers had a combined reach of 2,192,232 for the campaign, which highlights how mega-influencers can do an amazing job of building brand awareness. 

Influencer Strategy 3: Delivering a great ROI 

So we know that micro influencers tend to deliver the highest engagement rate and mega influencers are the best at supercharging your campaign reach, but when looking at the return on investment (ROI) of your influencer marketing spend, then the results are a lot more nuanced.

For each creator that we tracked in the #RaiseYourArches campaign we added an ‘estimated fee’ (so what McDonald’s might have paid each creator, based on their audience size) which enabled us to look at ROI metrics including Cost Per Engagement (CPE), Reach CPM and Views CPM.

In terms of CPE the top performing creators include a mix between different sized creators.

  1. Grace Barry with a CPE of £0.02 – (TikTok – 3.1M)
  2. Dane Pemberton with a CPE of £0.15 – (Instagram – 32.3K)
  3. Fin Draper with a CPE of £0.25 – (TikTok – 8.7M)

@danepemberton performed exceptionally well, receiving 2,749 engagements with a CPE of £0.15. In this case Dane delivered a low CPE due to his Instagram Reel being promoted on the @McDonaldsuk Instagram account – which massively increased the amount of exposure he would typically receive from a post.

In terms of Reach CPM (e.g. the cost to reach 1,000 followers) @danepemberton @samthompsonuk and @carlmullan were the top performers. This again shows the power of cross promoting micro influencers (more bang for your buck) and also the effectiveness of working with mega and macro influencers to drive cost effective reach.

Click here to take a deeper look at Dyzio’s ROI report for this campaign.

Key take-aways

McDonald’s strategy of working with different sizes and types of creators enabled them to maximise both the reach and engagement of their campaign, and connect with a diverse range of communities across different social networks,

Collaborating with a small number of well-known influencers delivered cost effective reach – and supporting this with a wide range of smaller / micro influencers delivered positive engagement in niche communities.

Boosting or cross promoting micro influencers (e.g. @danepemberton) can be a really powerful tool to maximise the impact of your campaign.

Looking to track and analyse your brand’s influencer marketing ROI?

If you’re interested in understanding how Dyzio can automatically track your influencer marketing ROI, then please Click Here to set-up a call with the Dyzio team, and get a free trial set-up today.