Here's a compilation of several of the TikTok videos made by influencers about the purple Grimace milkshake, part of the "Happy Birthday Grimace" meal promotion.
I'm a currently homeless, middle-aged, Generation X blogger and artist. I spend waaaaay too much time at McDonald's. Why? Cheap (though 60% more than a year ago) iced tea, and wifi. There are several McDonald's in my general area, and I often do some of my blogging or drawing in them. They are a good place to chill and work. I'm not really a Starbucks kind of guy, I'd rather be able to get refills and do my work at McDonald's. Also, I don't drink coffee, so I rarely go to Starbucks.
In the beginning of June, I saw these new promotion posters go up at Mickey D's, with picture of a meal, and Happy Birthday Grimace! in big letters. Since I was a 1970's kid, I remember Grimace as the least creepy of the weird, guy-in-a-suit characters, in McDonald's commercials from my childhood. Like this one. Over the years, McDonald's moved on, and other than Ronald McDonald himself, the weird 1970's characters, thankfully, disappeared from the commercials.
So with my cynical Gen X point of view, I saw the Happy Birthday Grimace promotion poster, which didn't even have a picture of Grimace, and thought, "That's the fucking stupidest marketing campaign ever." I did think about trying the purple shake out of curiosity, but never did.
As the month went on, I was sitting in a McDonald's working one night, and a high school girl walked by me, right to the Grimace poster. She shot a photo of it on her phone, and proceeded to share it on social media. I couldn't help myself, "You don't even know who Grimace is," I said, "He's from back when I was a kid, and I'm old." She said, "Sure I do," he's the big purple guy." She walked back to her friends. I was confused. I later heard moms telling small kids, "Grimace is kind of like Barney." One dad told his kid that if you drank the Grimace shake by itself, it tasted like vanilla, bug if you ate French fries first, then it tasted more fruity.
A couple days later, 4 or 5 teenage boys came into McDonald's, and again I was working, on a blog post, I think. They all got Grimace meals, and started talking about how they should make a video trying the Grimace milkshake. Again, I was confused. They looked like upscale, pretty intelligent young guys. And they sat there for ten minutes or so, eating the Grimace birthday meal, and talking about making a video about the Grimace shake. What the fuck is going on? I asked myself.
So I finally looked up "Grimace milkshake" on YouTube (I don't use TikTok). All these crazy videos, including a couple of the ones above, popped up. And several of them had millions, even tens of millions, of views.
Then I began wondering who the genius was who paid Gen Z influencers to make TikTok videos about drinking the Grimace shake and dying, turning into a zombie, or exploding. McDonald's marketers pulled a weird old character out of the dust bin of Mickey D's history, and I thought they apparently paid a handful of well known influencers on TikTok and elsewhere, to make crazy videos about drinking the Grimace purple shake, which spawned lots of wannabe influencers, and just random Gen Z people, to make their own videos. This goofy appearing marketing campaign knocked it out of the park with Gen Z people. And they bought the meal and the purple milkshake. I wondered if Gary Vanerchuk's VaynerMedia team was behind the campaign. But they weren't.
According to this article from Restaurant Business, McDonald's DID NOT plan the massive social media campaign, which ultimate clocked tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions, of impressions and mentions, across social media platforms, largely on TikTok. TikTokkers just made their own funny, usually horror-esque videos, and the thing went viral. So there was no marketing genius behind this campaign that pulled in a lot of sales for McDonald's. It apparently, was a truly organic thing, funny videos going viral on their own.
So now we can probably expect a whole bunch of companies to try and replicate this crazy campaign, and probably fail, for the most part. As a Gen X guy, now I'm wondering what will happen when Gen Z TikTok influencers find this old commercial from about 1976. The damn Nippersinkers song is still in my head from about 47 years ago. It actually pops in my head on rainy days. I even start singing it sometimes, I'm not kidding. We had a lot of Nippersinker days last winter, here in Southern California.
July 27, 2023- The Grimace HBD meal hype created by Gen Z's TikTok fun with the Grimace purple milkshakes actually did boost McDonald's sales for the quarter. CNBC article, 7/27/203-
How McDonald's makes its money... a different model than most fast food joints.
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