By the numbers
31%
increase in applications, year over year
9,000
active users in the first two months
50%
above the site traffic goal
Client background
McDonald’s North Texas is a franchisee co-operative covering the North Texas market. The group runs its own hiring outreach separate from McDonald’s national corporate portal.
The challenge
Entering 2023, the job market was historically tight. The co-operative relied on two things: localized grassroots efforts and a generalized national corporate portal. Neither was built for the moment. Applications hit historic lows. The franchisees brought in CKP to build a locally managed outreach campaign. The campaign needed to run on the brand’s employee value proposition. The goal was accelerating high-quality hires.
The CKP approach
CKP dropped the corporate recruiter persona. In its place: a localized career partner identity. Filling positions meant humanizing the brand first. A job at McDonald’s needed to read as a path to education and community impact.
CKP built a custom recruitment microsite for the North Texas co-operative alone. The site used original photography and video. Local crew members told their own stories on camera. No stock imagery.
The site featured deep-dives into the Archways to Opportunity program: tuition assistance, GED programming, and English language lessons, each explained in detail. Alongside the education content, the site carried community impact stories, including the co-operative’s support for Ronald McDonald House Charities. Every element on the site was built for the local market. Nothing was pulled from a national playbook.
What we delivered
- Strategic Communications & Narrative
- Recruitment
- Digital & Performance
- Creative & Content
- Microsite Development
Results
Applications grew 31% year over year, triple the original goal of 10%. Nearly 9,000 users engaged with the site as active users between launch and the end of its second month. Traffic beat its goal by 50%.
The lesson: humanize the hiring process and connect the job to something larger than the paycheck. The payoff is a reputation as an employer worth working for.
