Dreaming in Mono, thinking in stereo

My left brain says yeah, my right brain is puzzled. I´m thinking in stereo, about something best described as a transmedia attempt from McDonalds.


This winter McD are "everywhere", partnerships with multiple movies, standard adverts and Dreaming In Mono. Dreaming in Mono has it´s centre on a website were a story develops over several episodes that will "air" through the coming weeks. The synopsis:
The long lost cousin of the snowboard is once again hitting the slopes, when Alain and his Team Monoski conquer the north in their pursuit to break the dream record. But in the end is the record really all that matters?

The footage is created by Jens Jonsson for McD.  "McDonald’s has basically given me a free hand to tell my story about a crazy group of characters set around a McDonald's restaurant in the far north of Sweden somewhere on the borders with Finland and Norway. The briefing was not to show how good it is with hamburgers, but rather to create content that is entertaining and fun. 14 pages of manuscript suddenly grew to 70, and now it is time to share it with the Nordic region.“ says Jens Jonsson.


Or at least that´s what he says on the homepage. The quality of the production is excellent. It is entertaining, it´s fun. They have made iPhone apps based on a specific character from "the movie", minigames and off course a fanpage on Facebook, and then some more. Oh, the episodes will also air on national TV stations.


But why? Why create this extensive universe? Are really McD into making expensive productions just for fun? Last time I checked there were a big no after that specific question. So this must be a real attempt to try a brave new direction. 


The Dreaming in Mono campaign was developed at digital creative agency Perfect Fools, Stockholm. 





I really do salute McDonalds for their Transmedia attempt. But has the campaign real depth to pull it off? Or is this just a very expensive gimmick? I´m suspecting the latter.