McDonalds Don Goofed Up on Marketing, broh

Need that Sauce!

Ok for those of you who may not be fans of Rick and Morty (this is the reference for the article title), Season 3’s premiere featured the main character Rick obsessed with the limited edition McNugget szechuan dipping sauce.

As this sauce hasn’t been in McDonald’s restaurants in nearly 20 years, this more than likely came as a complete surprise to McDonald’s that the fan base of Rick and Morty was now curious about the taste of this sauce.

To set the table (forgive the food pun) let’s deep dive into what turned into a massive marketing blunder.

Rick and Morty as a show has been growing in fan base for the last few years. It has nearly a perfect rating with critics with Seasons 1–3 at 100%, 95% and 98% respectively on Rotten Tomatoes. This translates into widespread fan appreciation with viewership growth increasing 25% from Season 1 to Season 2 and then jumping 27% from Season 2 to Season 3. Season 3 averaged 2.51 million viewers in an 11:30 pm time slot. That bested everything on Sunday night prime time (8–11) until Game of Thrones started Season 7.

Ok all of those numbers are extremely important as they are in the coveted 18–49 viewership that Rick and Morty hit on, I would even say the show skews even younger into the Millennial generation.

Jump into McDonald’s at 2017. We have a company desperate to attract the Millennials. You have younger folks dumping burger joints in favor of pizza and other fast casual restaurants. McDonald’s tried to respond with what they thought would be liquid gold in sirhacha and kale on a burger and dipping sauce, which failed miserably in the eyes of consumers.

What was the issue with McDonald’s attempts to woo over this coveted younger generation? Just like Carman said in his Washington Post article, it stinks of old people wanting to be hip.

So April 1, 2017 rolls around. In perfect Rick and Morty fashion, they released the much anticipated Season 3 premiere episode online with no annoucement. Fans absolutely loved it (even though they hated the idea of not being able to plan to watch it). However, the big item to come out of that episode is what we had mentioned earlier, szechuan sauce.

McDonald’s for months on social media was hammered. Every PR post and ad was littered with requests for the sauce to return. McDonald’s wouldn’t respond until about August you could see the message trickled down to the marketing folks where they began to respond to the heavy demand with vague comments of “Keep your interdimensional cable box tuned. Hopefully, in 97 years or less, we bring back the sauce!” This is a reference to the episode of Rick willing to wait that long for the sauce but the fact that McDonald’s had that PR communication going out to their marketing dept./agency shows that they had finally had something up their sleeve.

A return of the sauce?

Sort of. McDonald’s announces for one day only, a select number of restaurants (in most states 1–2) a handful of packets of the sauce would be available. This is going to turn out ok, right?

You had lines, lines, lines, and riots and more riots. All instances (including the one I attended in Providence, RI) had police detail based on the sheer turnout. Most if not all restaurants ran out of the sauce even before the pre-annouced release time of 2 pm to stave off riots from the crowds, which didn’t work.

This is without a doubt one of the largest marketing blunders by a major corporation in some time.

Let’s examine what went wrong

1. McDonald’s Didn’t Do Their Homework. McDonald’s had the best kind of organic marketing fall into their lap. Something they didn’t pay for, it was a positive reason for their brand/product and a buyer persona they have been aching to reach in years. I don’t know of any marketing golden geese like that in the history I have been looking at the subject. So that being said, they should’ve spent the money (like they have in the past on marketing gimmicks) to gauge the size of the response. They had from April onward to do this, it wasn’t from a lack of time. They would have found demand surpassing that of their other seasonal items like McRib and Shamrock Shakes, thus that would have clued them into doing a short run (month or 2) of the sauce.
2. McDonald’s Pulled a Sony. Just as in our analysis of the horrible Pepsi Kendall Jenner ad, McDonald’s followed Sony’s model of forcing it with a generation. Ironically with Rick and Morty, McDonald’s didn’t have to do any heavy lifting, just give the fan base the sauce with a taste of the fan fare. Instead they threw a wrench into it and went the route of artificially creating a demand similar to Nintendo’s bungle of the NES Classic Edition. Just as with Nintendo, McDonald’s knew demand was strong, yet artificially limited supply to create a frenzy. In this case paid for it dearly PR wise.
3. McDonald’s Didn’t License. Compared to the first two, this item is lower on the totem pole, however in a similar bizarre move, McDonald’s didn’t pay Adult Swim (Owned by Turner) for the Rick and Morty license. So all of the advertisements, limited edition posters and marketing communication make subtle references without mentioning the R + M brand. In fact co-creator Justin Roiland had to come out and apologize and state clearly they were not affiliated with the McDonald’s roll out. As you can see if Adult Swim/R+M team were involved, it would have at the very least had a different response to the outpouring of support/demand. In fact, prior to the Season 3 release in April and through the summer, Adult Swim had been on a road tour with a bus that looks like the character Rick. That example could have been passed onto McDonald’s on how small Rick and Morty events would translate into crowd size.

In the aftermath of this fiasco, what did McDonald’s do…

McDonald’s PR answered quickly and did come out with an apology and a promise to have the sauce for a longer and wider limited release window in the winter. The frustrating part from a marketing standpoint is that McDonald’s had the release date in their control. If they needed more production time, they could have done it. The 3 reasons should be studied not just by marketing students as a case study of how not to handle an organic marketing opportunity, but by current corporations who are now dealing with social/viral responses to their brands.

Marketing opportunities don’t come around often, and when they do, take the time to do them right and your brand will be rewarded.