Australian fast food chain Hungry Jacks hijacks McDonald's promotion campaign

Australian fast food chain, Hungry Jack's has hijacked rival McDonald's promotional offer by allowing customers who win prizes at Big Mac's Monopoly promotion scheme, to redeem them at its own stores.

McDonald's customers win prizes including from cars and holidays to chips and cheeseburgers from a recurring promotion in which they match up Monopoly-themed stickers found on McDonald's fries and soft drinks.

But Hungry Jack's has now stepped in launching 'Flame Their Mcopoly', a website where customers can redeem their McDonald's food for its own.

As of yesterday, the Maccas Play website said, it had over 20 million prizes to be claimed.

To rub it in Hungry Jacks run a tongue-in-cheek disclaimer at the bottom of the page: "in no way authorised or endorsed by you know who."

In marketing parlance the tactic is called "hijack marketing", which was resorted to by Adidas and Nike during the last World Cup, WAtoday reported.

It added, even Coca-Cola had its Coke Zero hijacked by Oxfam. According to commentators, though McDonald's and Hungry Jacks had skirmished in the past, the latest looked like a full-blown war.

"It's absolutely sensational. Cashing in on Maccas coupons is gold," Edwina Luck, senior lecturer at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), told WAtoday.

How could McDonald's respond effectively to effrontery? According to Luck its best response would be to retaliate with an omni-channel onslaught showing real people winning prizes, with staff posting stories about how people were winning and how frequently that happened.

But whatever the case, with Hungry Jacks spending virtually nothing to get its message across, the fight going viral is the kind of publicity that McDonald's may want to do without.