Tag: Malaysia

McDonald’s: Save the Sundae Cone

A melting cone that asks the street to help

Summer is here and McDonald’s is back with an interactive outdoor campaign built around one simple problem. A giant LED billboard in Bukit Bintang, one of Kuala Lumpur’s best-known shopping districts, showcases the iconic Sundae Cone. But it is melting.

To save it, people use their smartphones to spin a fan on the billboard, bring the temperature down, and stop the cone from disappearing.

The mechanic: one shared control, one visible outcome

The execution translates an abstract idea, “cool it down,” into a single piece of viewer control. You open the experience on your phone and spin a fan. The billboard responds in real time. When more people join in, the cooling effect accelerates, so the experience naturally becomes collaborative rather than solo.

In some write-ups, participation is also rewarded with a Sundae Cone e-voucher that arrives on the phone, adding a clean payoff to the play.

In high-footfall retail districts, interactive DOOH, meaning public digital screens that react to what people do, works best when the action is obvious, social, and instantly rewarded.

In high-density urban retail districts, the win is not interactivity by itself but a public action that converts attention into nearby store traffic.

Why it lands

It is instantly legible from a distance. Something is melting. A crowd can fix it. Because the phone gesture maps directly to the visual problem on the screen, people understand the task instantly and the crowd can follow the result without explanation. That clarity creates a low-friction loop: notice. join. watch the shared progress. earn the reward. The “melting” constraint also adds urgency without needing any heavy messaging, and the big screen makes every participant feel like they are influencing something larger than a banner.

Extractable takeaway: If you want people to interact in public, reduce the mechanic to one familiar gesture, make the result visible to everyone, and design the reward so participation feels worth it even for a 30-second engagement.

What McDonald’s is really buying

The real question is whether the screen can turn public play into store-proximate action before attention drifts. This is a strong retail DOOH execution because the interaction, the product promise, and the path to redemption all reinforce each other. This is not only awareness. It is behavior. Get people to take out their phone, do a playful action tied to heat and refreshment, and then convert that attention into a reason to walk into a nearby store. The billboard becomes a live demo of “cool relief,” not a static claim.

What retail teams should borrow

  • Design for crowds first. If spectators cannot immediately understand what participants are doing, participation stalls.
  • Make progress collective. Shared outcomes create social proof and naturally recruit more people.
  • Keep the gesture native. One simple interaction beats a clever multi-step flow in outdoor environments.
  • Tie reward to proximity. If you can convert engagement into a nearby redemption moment, the media becomes a traffic engine.

A few fast answers before you act

What is “Save the Sundae Cone”?

It is an interactive digital out-of-home campaign in Kuala Lumpur where a billboard shows a melting Sundae Cone and invites the public to cool it down using their smartphones.

How do people control the billboard?

They use their phone to spin a fan mechanic that cools the on-screen temperature. More participants increase the effect, making it collaborative.

Why is the melting mechanic effective?

Melting creates urgency that anyone understands, and it turns participation into a visible “save” moment the crowd can watch.

What makes this a strong example of interactive DOOH?

The action is obvious, the feedback is immediate, and the experience becomes social because progress is shared on a large public screen.

What is the key takeaway for other brands?

Use one native gesture, show real-time feedback in public, and reward participation quickly so interaction feels like a fair trade.

IKEA: Catalogue Countdown Room

You walk into IKEA and find a room that is not finished. It is counting down. Each day the space changes again, styled with new catalogue products, like the store itself is teasing what is about to arrive.

That is the idea behind IKEA’s in-store Catalogue Countdown Room in Singapore and Malaysia. After previously re-imagining the 2013 catalogue with visual recognition technology that brought pages to life, this launch moment focuses on anticipation and theatre inside the store. It turns the catalogue release into a daily event that people can watch, not just pick up.

In practice, the countdown room is refreshed repeatedly as the countdown progresses, then broadcast live via IKEA’s Facebook presence so the excitement travels beyond the store floor.

Why a countdown room beats “catalogue is here”

Catalogue launches usually arrive with a shrug. Everyone expects them, so attention is low. A countdown reframes the arrival as something you can miss, and that creates urgency. The room format also makes the catalogue feel less like a book and more like a living set of ideas you can step into.

Extractable takeaway: If you can show visible progress on a reliable rhythm, routine product drops start to feel like a story people choose to follow.

What the mechanism is really doing

The room is a content engine. In this context, a content engine is a repeatable setup that produces fresh, shareable moments on a schedule. Each refresh creates a new “moment” for store visitors and a new visual for social, which is why the idea keeps earning attention. It can host small performances, demos, and micro-events without needing a different concept every day. The catalogue becomes the raw material.

The real question is: can you turn a catalogue release into a daily moment people choose to follow?

In omnichannel retail marketing, the most repeatable “launch” pattern is to make one physical moment behave like media, then let social distribution carry it further than paid reach alone.

What to steal for your next retail launch

  • Build one stage that can change. A single physical space that transforms repeatedly generates content without extra production locations.
  • Turn “arrival” into anticipation. Countdowns make routine drops feel like events.
  • Design for shareable proof. The room should look different enough each day that people want to show the change.
  • Let the store be the hero. When the in-store moment is genuinely interesting, social becomes documentation, not advertising.

A few fast answers before you act

What is the IKEA Catalogue Countdown Room?

It is an in-store installation that changes during a countdown to the new IKEA catalogue launch. The room is repeatedly restyled using catalogue products, and the changes are shared through social channels.

Why does a countdown create more engagement than a standard catalogue drop?

A countdown adds scarcity and rhythm. People know something is happening each day, so they return, check in, and talk about what changed instead of treating the catalogue as background noise.

What makes this an integrated campaign?

The same story runs across the store, social distribution, and supporting communications. The room creates the physical event. Social extends it beyond store visitors. The catalogue provides the content foundation.

What is the key lesson for retailers launching many new products at once?

Do not try to communicate everything at once. Create a single repeatable format that can spotlight different products over time, so attention compounds across multiple touchpoints.

What is the biggest risk with “live” retail content?

If the daily payoff is weak, people stop checking. The room needs visible change and a reason to watch each day, otherwise the countdown becomes decoration.