Why it matters to you
If you’ve ever wanted to complete a musical quiz while waiting in line at McDonald’s, now’s your chance.
Lingering in a McDonald’s isn’t the most appealing way to spend an afternoon (unless you’re small enough to fit through PlayPlace tubes, maybe). But you have to hand it to Mickie D’s for doing all it can to keep customers around. Select spots offer free Wi-Fi, and others host exclusive digital content like Pokémon Go collectibles. And on Tuesday, McDonald’s app users in Sweden get auto-generated music quizzes.
McDonald’s latest enticement comes in the form of BeatQuiz, a new feature of the restaurant chain’s mobile app for Android and iOS. It’s a multiple-choice game about popular tunes — using the location-tracking hardware of any smartphone, BeatQuiz automatically generates questions related to the restaurant’s soundtrack.
“A never-ending digital pop quiz, BeatQuiz is packed with incredible entertainment that McDonald’s guests are going to love,” Ulf Persson, head of digital customers experiences at McDonald’s Sweden, said in a statement. “We can’t wait for people to start challenging pals and impressing others with their music trivia knowledge. Personally, I can’t stop playing it. And you won’t be able to either.”
There’s more to BeatQuiz than tricky questions. A daily leaderboard lets you see how your musical knowledge compares to your McDonald’s peers, and a local multiplayer enables one-on-one battles with friends — presumably over a Big Mac and fries.
Soundtrack Your Brand, the streaming service behind BeatQuiz, said it’s been more than a year in the making. The company teamed up with global advertising firm DDB and Soundtrack Labs to build an open API, which it’ll make broadly available down the line.
“Games like Nintendo’s Pokémon Go have showed us that the best playground out there is the world we live in, Joel Brosjö, SoundTrack Your Brand’s co-founder and chief experience officer, said in a statement. “With BeatQuiz, we’re applying the same logic to bring McDonald’s restaurant environment to life.”
It’s not the first of the The Golden Arches’ mobile efforts. In November, McDonald’s announced smartphone-based ordering that lets customers reserve and pay for food ahead of time. The chain expects that by 2018, it’ll be available in 20,000 to 25,000 restaurants worldwide.
And McDonald’s is harnessing the power of mobile in another way: Recruitment. In April, McDonald’s in Australia (where it’s known as Macca) is using Snapchat as part of its job application process. The global fast-food purveyor has its own filter — “Snaplications” — that lets prospective employees don digital uniforms and submit a 10-second video application.