How many people did McDonald’s milkshakes ‘kill’
In this article we will look at an unexpected UGC trend.
Has anyone around you been kidnapped by Grimace?
Grimace is one of the mascots designed by McDonald’s in 1971 and a childhood memory for many 80s and 90s Americans. McDonald’s kicked off a nostalgic marketing campaign in June this year to celebrate Grimace’s 52nd birthday with the Grimace Meal, which included a purple berry-flavored milkshake. The combination of the milkshake itself, which is not a normal food color, and the fact that Grimace was originally set up as a monster that steals milkshakes from humans, has led to a user-created storyline of “accidents happening after drinking weird Grimace milkshakes”, which has gone viral on TikTok; to date, the hashtag #grimaceshake has been trending on TikTok. To date, #grimaceshake has received more than 3 billion views on TikTok, and even the actress who plays Monica in Friends has joined in the creation of the video, which has received more than 2 million views and an official response from McDonald’s.
If you can’t beat it, join it：McDonald’s response to this trend
McDonald’s, faced with this not entirely positive public opinion festering, instead of seriously proving themselves, went along with the internet’s shenanigans. First, they sent a free birthday package to the creator who started the trend in the first place, bringing the word of mouth back to the positive; then, McDonald’s own CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) posted a video of him being “murdered” after drinking Grimace Shake; Then the official social media posted ” meee pretending i don’t see the grimace shake trendd” in Grimace’s voice, with a photo of Grimace’s naive and slightly creepy blindness; and finally, a post saying goodbye to Grimace’s downlisting had more than 200,000 likes, which is 10 times more than the interaction rate of the post about its launch. Judging by the trend of brand interactions on Instagram and TikTok, McDonald’s has increased the discussion of its brand a lot more without spending a cent more.
Who’s the winner? McDonald’s, tiktok or users
For me, I find this trend a little creepy, but imaginative at the same time. But from this case, we can see that although this UGC was initiated by users and full of uncontrollability, it is also extremely important for the officials to be able to monitor the trend at an early stage and participate in it. In short, if a brand wants to do UGC, they should try to explore the characteristics of the product or advert that can stimulate the audience’s desire to create, discuss and share. Just like Purcell said: “Given the falling price of camcorders, editing software, broadband subscriptions and mobile phone rates, content creation is also increasingly in the hands of the ‘crowd’.”
The content created by users could eventually become part of the brand. According to Leadbeater, the web’ s ‘underlying culture of sharing, decentralization and democracy’ has led to a situation he describes as ‘We-Think’, a revolution in ‘how we think, play, work and create, together, en masse’. This is an opportunity to use technology to harvest the ideas and creativity of millions of ordinary people. In this trend, users reap the joy in creating the video, McDonald’s reaps the buzz and sales, the platform reaps the traffic, and the only one who gets hurt is probably Grimace.