Orcs and elves join McDonald's in fast-food war

Diners at a McDonald's Warcraft-themed outlet in Shanghai. [Gao'erqiang / China Daily]

McDonald's Corp is enlisting the orcs and elves of the World of Warcraft in its fight to win over Chinese consumers scared away by food safety scandals.

To entice younger customers, McDonald's designed Warcraft-themed outlets and gave away virtual items such as magic turtles tied to the popular online role-playing game, its first cooperation in China with a computer game.

The effort comes as the world's largest restaurant chain seeks to recover from a food scandal in July, when its main supplier in Shanghai was accused of selling expired meat, leading China sales to plunge 23 percent.

The crisis embroiled Yum Brands' KFC and other eateries, forcing the chains to pull items off menus as they rushed to find alternative suppliers.

"I know of McDonald's supplier issues, but I wanted to try out the latest Warcraft game before its release," said 21-year-old Li Jialiang, a Warcraft fanatic who endured a 12-hour train ride from central Henan province to visit one of the themed restaurants in Shanghai.

As they waited by a row of laptops set up in the outlet to test the newest edition of the Activision Blizzard Inc game, Li and his friends bought a 69 yuan ($11.2) chicken box set that gave enough points to redeem an ice-conjuring monster pet.

In World of Warcraft, fantasy races such as orcs, elves and Pandarens, a race of panda-like humanoids, battle for glory.

While fast-food chains often hold promotions with popular Western games, movies and cartoon characters in the United States, such collaborations became common in China only in recent years.

The Warcraft marketing campaign helped McDonald's quadruple sales of its chicken box set, its China spokeswoman Regina Hui confirmed.

It started on Sept 24 and will run until year-end, and is not related to the July food safety incident, she said. The chain had previously held a promotion in China featuring Angry Birds, a mobile phone-based game.

McDonald's Japan unit, which sourced chicken nuggets from the same Chinese supplier and has forecast a full-year loss due to the case, also started sales of calendars featuring a popular cartoon called Yokai Watch on Nov 7, as part of efforts to draw families back after the incident, vice-president Row Imamura said at a briefing in Tokyo.