McDonald’s Sweden just wed personalization, print on demand, in-person experience and digital marketing into a branded merchandise-driven campaign that had fans “lovin’ it” – all of which carries potential business-building takeaways for purveyors of promotional products.

The global fast-food corporation’s Sweden-based division turned the receipts of 4,000 customers’ orders into prints that appeared on T-shirts that were then gifted to those individuals.

McDonald’s printed images of customers’ order receipts on T-shirts like this one. Credit: NORDDBB/McDonald’s Sweden

To get the tees, people had to attend at least one of 12 summer music festivals in Sweden. There, they could place their food order at an onsite McDonald’s kiosk. Merch pros then printed the image of the receipt onto a white T-shirt in real time, and the Big Mac- or McNugget-loving patron walked away with a new personalized tee.

The shirts also featured a QR code. When scanned, it gave the T-shirt recipient a discount on their next order at any McDonald’s in Sweden.

“Considering the engagement we received, it’s safe to say that we all feel strongly about our own particular order,” said Susanne Wahlberg, project manager at McDonald’s Sweden. “Your McDonald’s order does say a lot about you, and now thousands of fans can flaunt theirs in a fun and unexpected way.”

Lessons for Promo Professionals

For sure, the clever campaign has certain takeaways that promo pros can put into practice to power the success of solutions they craft for clients. Here are three:

Do More With Personalization: The age of mass personalization is here. Marketers across industries are intensifying efforts to develop messaging and experiences that create desired impacts through initiatives that speak to the key preferences and interests of specific, segmented audiences, sometimes right down to each individual.

As the McDonald’s receipt T-shirts illustrate, branded merchandise can play a pivotal role in scaling personalization efforts. Promo distributors should think like creative agencies and explore opportunities to include more personalization in the swag campaigns they engineer for clients.

“Orders at McDonald’s can be quite specific and unique,” said Fabian Luthander, copywriter at NORDDDB, the agency that worked with McDonald’s on the tee campaign. “That’s why it felt fun to focus on an expression that has united all types of fans worldwide for decades – merch.”

One potential promo-world example with personalization: Perhaps you work with resorts. Are there opportunities to take elements of the guest experience and translate them into mementos that also feature subtle resort branding? Maybe a couple celebrating an anniversary had their picture taken at a scenic spot on the resort grounds. Perhaps you can help your client get such images printed on products like “his and her” campfire mugs.

Incorporate Merch Into Brand Experiences: Experiential marketing is gaining ever more traction, especially in the post-COVID era. This marketing practice, of course, involves brands connecting with customers through experiences – from pop-up stores to in-person product launches to various hosted events.

Branded merchandise can be a perfect complementary component of such efforts. It allows an attendee to take a tangible piece of the experience home with them – a consistent physical reminder of the experience and the brand that provided it.

I’m willing to bet at least some of the Swedes that were stoked to get the McDonald’s tees will remember the experience of getting their personalized receipt T-shirt made and the festival they were at more vividly and more fondly because of the merch.

Worth saying: It’s now easier and less expensive than ever to make the actual printing of certain products part of the merch effort at an experiential marketing event, as McDonald’s Sweden did, thanks to advances in direct-to-garment printing and print on demand.

PRINTING United Expo 2024: Maintaining Margins With Print-On-Demand https://t.co/B4Q8yrgw2j

— Chris Ruvo (@ChrisR_ASI) October 17, 2024

A version of the McDonald’s concept can work, for instance, in the sports world. Whether at the professional, collegiate or even high school level, perhaps there’s a major game – championship, playoff, archrival matchup – that a team is participating in. The team’s print-on-demand partner could be onsite at the game to do fulfillment for the first however-many fans show up – an enticement to get them there and spending on concessions earlier. There could be a printed image of an attending fan’s ticket, their name and the logo of the team – what could become quite the sentimental keepsake if there’s a big victory.

Let’s Get “Phygital”: McDonald’s/NORDDDB were especially smart to include the QR code with its related deal on the T-shirt. It’s a great blending of physical (the branded T-shirt) and digital marketing (the code). The code provides another avenue through which end-users can interact with the McDonald’s brand – and rewards them for doing so.

Promo pros should seek more opportunities to meld the physical and digital in the merch they create for clients.

Say, for example, a client is at a trade show promoting a new product or line. Perhaps they could give away can coolers that include a QR code that links back to a landing page with quick-hit information about the product/line. Then, if the end-user clicks through to the main site for more information, they will get some kind of small discount on their purchase of the product/product from the line. There are so many potential positive intersections.

Ultimately, the McDonald’s receipt tees are a brilliantly quirky campaign that highlights trends in the merch and marketing universe that, if capitalized on correctly, can spur success for promotional products professionals and their clients. My only complaint is that I didn’t get one.