4 Ways McDonald's Is Desperately Marketing McCafe Coffee

McDonald's has launched a massive marketing blitz for its coffee.

The fast food chain is slowly moving toward becoming more like a coffee shop, selling breakfast pastries and expanding its morning menu. It has reportedly started testing bagged coffee in stores.

The chain also faces more competition than ever. Last week, Taco Bell launched a national breakfast menu that competes directly with McDonald's breakfast menu.

The burger chain gets 20% of its revenue from breakfast sales and can't afford to keep losing customers.

Here's four ways McDonald's is trying to attract coffee drinkers.

1. McDonald's is offering free McCafe for two weeks, starting March 31. The coffee is only free during the chain's breakfast hours, which end at 10:30 a.m. at most U.S. locations. The company has been posting about the offer at least hourly for the last two days on Twitter and Facebook.

2. The company launched a pop-up concert with the band Karmin from the roof of a bus in New York City's Times Square Monday morning. The bus was decked out in McCafe ads.

The chain made these backpacks for serving coffee during the event:

3. McDonald's has launched a series of new ads featuring young professionals touting McCafe's taste. Another new ad provides a background of how McCafe is made, with footage from an Arabica coffee bean farm.

4. Hoping for a bit of free marketing, McDonald's is now promoting a contest where customers who tweet pictures of themselves enjoying a McCafe could win free coffee for a year.