Early November 2008, a mysterious fast-food restaurant called Quarter Pounder appeared in two specialty locations in Tokyo. Just weeks before both locations were McDonald’s restaurants however the Quarter Pounder restaurant had suddenly emerged in their place. There was much fanfare and people queued in long orderly lines as word got out that the Quarter Pounder was the thing to try.
The Quarter Pounder stores had minimalistic décor and no sign of brand or markings to indicate that these new stores were affiliated with McDonald’s. All of the old wall coverings, fixtures and furniture and had been removed and the interior had been painted black and red, giving it a cabaret club look.
It is worth noting that the Quarter Pounder has not been available in Japanese McDonald’s restaurants for almost 30 years.
Quarter Pounder storefront
A queue at the QP store
Quarter Pounder service counter
Quarter Pounder meal
The menu offered only either a Quarter Pounder with Cheese or a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese in generic, unbranded packaging. Both as a value set, meaning that the Coke and fries were mandatory.
So, what were these new stores?
As it turns out, McDonald’s Japan were looking to reintroduce the Quarter Pounder burger back onto the regular McDonald’s menu. Conveniently, two McDonald’s restaurants in key shopping streets in Tokyo were about to close due to their leases expiring giving McDonald’s the chance to try their hand at some creative buzz marketing.
McDonald’s created the Quarter Pounder stores to test the waters of no-brand advertising and viral marketing endeavoring to create some kind of drama to generate pre-buzz before the sandwich was officially released as a McDonald’s branded product throughout regular McDonald’s stores.
After less than 4 weeks, these two promotional branches closed on the 27th November 2008 coinciding with the re-introduction of the Quarter Pounder at regular McDonald’s branches nationwide from the 28th November 2008.
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Very insightful! As I mentioned to you McDonald’s did have a brief quarter pounder campaign in the summer of 2004 (I think) for a month or 2. It was not as exciting as this campaign though. It will be interesting to see how they make out with the Double quarter pounders – at face value it would seem a tad massive for the typical Japanese tummy.
sneaky sneaky!