The appointment allows Burnett to consolidate its hold of McDonald's business in the region, but comes as a blow to DDB, which has handled the fast food company's traditional advertising business in Taiwan for the past 17 years.
"DDB declined to pitch for the creative. The agency doesn't have an interactive division in Taiwan so OMD stepped in to help put that together. But there are questions whether this was really a fair pitch," said a source.
Jesse Lin, business director at Burnett Interactive, said the two agencies were given identical budgets to produce the two separate campaigns. The client then compared the results.
OMD's brief involved a campaign, which was launched last year to attract customers to McDonald's outlets in Taiwan following increased competition from rival chains such as KFC; Burnett worked on a new product launch for McDonald's.
Burnett developed an eight-week campaign for McDonald's 'New Taste' product.
Lin said the online viral campaign attracted 900,000 visitors, collected 230,000 email address and resulted in the print out of 190,000 e-coupon.
OMD worked on a microsite to win back customers of McDonald's.
Said the source: "The campaign was in cooperation with (Taiwan portal) Yam.com. It also involved coupons, which could be downloaded. But there was no new product to push this, so obviously the results were not as impressive as those of Leo Burnett. I don't believe this can be called a fair pitch."
In response to the claims, Lin added: "The client decided on how to call the pitch, its mechanism and which agency would pitch on which product."
Burnett will now focus on developing a website for McDonald's in Taiwan, which is scheduled for launch in March. It will also develop an online Chinese New Year campaign.
"The website - www.mcdonalds.com.tw - will express the spirit of McDonald's around the 'Every time a good time' line. We will also work towards understanding users better and collecting information through surveys. The site will feature a different event every month and an interactive map to search for store locations. There will also be a section dedicated to the children's Happy Meals and the toys which are unique to McDonald's,
Lin said.
The creative director on the account is Larry Lok.
