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When an Awkward McDonald’s Video Becomes a Marketing Win
- Frank Dappah
- Mar 7
- 4 min read
The internet laughed, rival chains piled on, and somehow the Big Arch may have ended up with exactly the kind of attention money struggles to buy.
I do not think the expert marketing folks at McDonald’s could have planned a more perfect sweet mishap even if they tried. What was clearly meant to be a straightforward promotional clip of McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski trying the new Big Arch burger in a very normal, not weird at all way, instead wandered straight into the comedy wing of the internet.
He took a tiny bite, referred to the sandwich as “the product,” and delivered the kind of energy that suggested a man trying to sell enthusiasm to the public while perhaps not fully feeling it himself. Social media noticed immediately, and not in a gentle way.
The mockery spread because the clip had all the ingredients the internet loves most: corporate awkwardness, forced relatability, and a giant burger that looked like it might require either commitment or a building permit.
Rival chains jumped into the fun. Burger King responded with its own video. Wendy’s and others piled on too. What might have been just another polished brand post instead turned into a full-blown online roast, which, in the modern attention economy, is sometimes just another word for distribution. And here is where things get interesting.
The awkwardness may have actually worked.
According to Nation’s Restaurant News, the original clip alone drew more than 4.5 million views, giving the Big Arch an enormous burst of visibility. PeakMetrics, cited in that same report, found that the online conversation was driven heavily by humor and ridicule, with 35.3% of posts classified as humorous or mocking, 19.6% tied to political or economic framing, and 18.8% centered on competitor reactions. In other words, people were not just watching. They were joking, reposting, dunking, and dragging the burger into every corner of the social web.
That matters because attention is not always tidy. Brands like to imagine that customers will encounter a product through a handsome campaign, a perfect photo, and a carefully scripted caption. Real life tends to be messier. Sometimes people hear about a new menu item because the CEO looked uncomfortable eating it on camera and the internet decided to turn that discomfort into a weekend hobby. That may not be elegant, but elegant is overrated when the public is actually paying attention.
There is also a real number attached to all this hoopla. MarketWatch reported that Apex Marketing estimated the viral wave around the Big Arch generated more than 70 million views across reposts, memes, and parody videos, amounting to roughly $18.4 million in brand value for McDonald’s.
MarketWatch also reported that McDonald’s said early sales are beating expectations. That is not the same thing as a full public earnings breakdown, but it is far more than a vague “people are talking” narrative. It suggests that the noise may have translated into actual curiosity at the counter.
And there is an even larger backdrop here. This is not a burger McDonald’s tossed into the world on a whim. In a corporate document highlighting innovation efforts, the company said a 12-week test of the Big Arch showed incremental sales exceeding forecasts and positive trade-ups across the menu. McDonald’s also identified the burger as a potentially very large opportunity, and its 2024 annual report noted that the product had already been piloted in Portugal, Germany, and Canada before its broader push. So even before the CEO clip became internet bait, the burger was already showing signs of commercial promise.
That is why this whole thing is more than just a funny internet episode. It is a reminder that marketing does not always need to be admired to be effective. Sometimes it just needs to be impossible to ignore. Consumers do not always move from polished admiration to purchase. Sometimes they move from mockery to curiosity. Sometimes the path is not “That looks delicious.” Sometimes it is “What is this thing everyone keeps talking about?” That second path may be less glamorous, but it can still lead to the drive-thru.
And honestly, I get it. I am not a huge McDonald’s guy myself, but the next time I am out on some dusty country road heading to see a client and I pull into a drive-thru, I am probably going to think about the Big Arch. Not because I was seduced by some flawless campaign. Not because a CEO took a majestic bite and looked transformed by burger bliss. But because the whole awkward saga lodged itself in my brain, jingling around with the rest of the cultural clutter until it became familiar. Familiarity, in marketing, is often half the sale.
So yes, the video was awkward. Yes, the internet roasted it. Yes, rival chains treated it like an open mic night. But when a brand ends up with millions of views, tens of millions more in amplified chatter, an estimated $18.4 million in publicity value, and company comments that early sales are already ahead of expectations, it becomes harder to call the whole thing a flop. At some point, an embarrassment with this much reach starts looking a lot like a strategy, even if it arrived wearing clown shoes.
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