The Campaign

Nostalgia has always been an easy win for McDonald’s, and there was a lot of passion around the resurrection of the late-nineties McDonald’s Birthday Parties. But to care about a birthday party, you need to care about the person being celebrated - and for millions of McD’s fans, that person was easily Grimace, who garnered adoring comments and tens of thousands of likes each time he was mentioned.

To celebrate Grimace’s birthday properly, he needed to be not only the voice of our campaign, but the epicenter. We carefully crafted a tone of voice bible that guided all of our assets, making sure that Grimace came across as consistently lovable and meme-able.  From Tiktok to 1:1 text messages, we molded Grimace’s presence to ensure he showed up to each platform authentically.

When a viral Tik Tok challenge inspired thousands to pretend Grimace and/or his Birthday shake was killing them, we had a choice. Condemn it? Participate? Instead, we exercised restraint, subtly acknowledging the trend with a tweet instead of  condemning or, even worse, participating and making it lame. The result was an enormous win for the brand, both in sales lift and brand love.