McDonald’s Bahrain’s latest campaign, “Buy the Dip,” cleverly turns an economic headline into a marketing stunt with bite.
Created by agency LEO UAE, the activation borrows from investor slang to sell not shares but… sauces. For a limited time, customers could purchase “dip bundles” whose price was directly indexed to the Nasdaq. Whenever the stock market dipped, so did the cost of the sauces.
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The stunt was rolled out with precision targeting: billboards in Bahrain’s financial district, banners on trading platforms, placements in economic media, and most importantly, a real-time mechanic inside the McDonald’s app that automatically adjusted pricing in line with market fluctuations.
“The market drops, so do we,” explained Ahmad Jasser, General Manager of McDonald’s Bahrain. “We wanted to turn a moment of uncertainty into a positive message: not all downturns are bad.”
Victor Haffling, Associate Creative Director at LEO UAE, added with humor: “Historically, our sauces have outperformed stocks—both in taste and in satisfaction.”
With Buy the Dip, McDonald’s proves once again that the brand knows how to infiltrate cultural conversations far outside its usual playground. By parodying financial jargon and pairing it with a real interactive mechanic, the campaign shows how blending hot topics, humor, and consumer engagement can create a marketing moment that resonates.
Or as McDonald’s Bahrain puts it: “This is not financial advice. Just condiment advice.”
