McDonald’s Qatar has launched a 14-day, weather-triggered campaign developed by Saatchi & Saatchi Qatar and Publicis Media Qatar that turned summer heat into a real-time targeted digital out-of-home campaign.
Titled ‘Feels Like Zero’, the brand campaign translated Doha’s hot June conditions into a single live number: The Thirst Score.
This scoring system, a 0-to-100 metric engineered by the agency teams, updated Doha how thirsty the city is in real time based on weather conditions. The latest campaign is a deliberate step up from 2024, when McDonald’s Qatar and Saatchi & Saatchi Qatar ran a single temperature-triggered campaign for the summer cooler range.
Built to launch McDonald’s Mixology range with Passionfruit x Sprite and Watermelon x Sprite flavours, the three-layer system pulled three live data points from AccuWeather and stacked them into a story.
The temperature provided the air reading, Feels Like applied AccuWeather’s patented RealFeel index and The Thirst Score converted that into a 0-to-100 figure using a published formula: Thirst Score = ((RealFeel °C − 25) ÷ 30) × 100, with every input grounded in global standards including ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 55-2020, the US National Weather Service Heat Index, the US EPA AQI and WHO Heat Health Warning Systems.
The result was a marketing metric with the rigour of a meteorological one.
“Feels Like Zero is exactly the kind of work we want to put behind our brand in Qatar,” said Sara Abuobeid, Director of Marketing & Communications, McDonald’s Qatar. “It met our customers at the right moment with the right message.”
The campaign was also ruthlessly efficient at targeting consumers in real-time. The campaign activated only when Doha hit a high thirst score, between 67 to 100, which on a typical mid-June day would run to roughly five to seven peak hours.
“Most weather campaigns stop at temperature. We wanted to turn the way Doha actually feels into something the brand could own, so we built The Thirst Score, data turned into story,” said Rasha Moghrabi, Creative Director, Saatchi & Saatchi Qatar.
“It is grounded in real meteorological science and it speaks in McDonald’s voice. That is the line we are always trying to walk: creative that is engineered, and engineering that is creative,” she added.
Ad spend landed only in the windows when a cold drink was the most relevant message in the city.
The creative lived across a nine-screen digital outdoor network powered by ELAN Media and built by Elaris Labs, including Al Masa in Al Waab, The Gateways at the Lusail City entrance, the Corniche Mina District in Old Doha, The Crown on Al Sadd, The Halo in Msheireb and The Axis at Doha Festival City, alongside digital mupis at Doha Festival City, Mall of Qatar and Place Vendôme. Each screen carried the live Temperature, Feels Like reading and Thirst Score next to the Mixology creative, so the medium and the message updated together.
The team then closed the loop. Working with location intelligence partner Azira, Saatchi & Saatchi Qatar and Publicis Media Qatar triangulated the geolocations of all nine screens, then re-engaged the devices that passed through those zones during live HIGH moments on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube with the matching creative. A billboard seen on the street followed the same person into the feed.
“The Thirst Score is only half the system,” said Vinod Raman, Head of Integrated Media at Publicis Media Qatar. “Azira gave us the ability to triangulate every screen, identify the audiences who drove past during a live HIGH moment, and re-engage them later on their phones. That’s how a billboard becomes a conversation. The media activated only when Doha was genuinely thirsty, and then followed the same person from the street straight into the feed.”
In terms of results, ‘Feels Like Zero’ delivered more than 10.4 million impressions and 5.6 million video views. The nine-screen outdoor network accounted for 2.8 million of those impressions, served only during live high temperature windows, while the digital and retargeting layer added a further 7.6 million impressions and 5.6 million views.
Credits:
Client: McDonald’s Qatar
Creative Agency: Saatchi & Saatchi Qatar
Creative Director: Rasha Moghrabi
Associate Creative Director: Anas Alabsi
Account Director: Adan Ali
Senior Account Manager: Rouaa Zeidan
Senior Account Executive: Maria Chouli
Art Director: Meiserrim Mhamdi
Lead Graphic Designer: Nabeel Hassan
Media Agency: Publicis Media Qatar
Business Director, Ibrahim Kalash
Head of Integrated Media: Vinod Raman
Partners:
Out-of-Home Network: ELAN Media
Build & Development: Elaris Labs
Location Intelligence: Azira
Weather Data: AccuWeather
