McDonald's in the US had lost touch with young and multicultural audiences that are the future of the category and needed a way back in. Entertainment partnerships can fast track cultural credibility but risk the brand looking desperate. This is the story of how a market leader challenged the challengers and found its edge—and created a new generation of fans. It tells of how an aging brand found lightning in a bottle while the world was at a standstill and youth were yearning for release.

Our starting point was a powerful insight: “No matter who you are, everyone has a go-to McDonald’s order.” This inspired our 2020 Super Bowl commercial which featured celebrity fans and their go-to orders, Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, Patrick Mahomes and more.

It's not a huge leap to go from celebrating celebrity orders in a commercial to making those orders available at restaurants for people to participate in. Our strategic idea was simple: release celebrity orders as meals, and turn going to McDonald's into a cultural event. For a brief moment, fans could eat like their heroes, igniting the sort of mass-participation moment youth had been starved of after months of lockdowns. This was our opportunity to transform an everyday trip to McDonald’s into a one-of-a-kind experience for multicultural youth tastemakers.

But who could we partner with to help light the fuse? We needed parameters for selecting partners otherwise we’d look like every other brand partnering with influencer du jour for fifteen minutes of fame. We set down some criteria:

- Legit fan—an intense passion for McDonald's was crucial to drive desire in others. Our audience had grown up surrounded by brand partnerships and could suss out inauthenticity.

- Big enough name to create buzz but keen enough to go all in.

- Relevant to our audience – to galvanize youth and activate pop culture.

And some ingredients for the platform itself:

- An authentic and unique order, announced in a PR-worthy way.

- Coveted content—keepsakes and experiences to fuel the stars fanbase, driving participation and sales.

- Digital—mobilize the app to bring fans something extra and drive digital adoption.

- Affordability—a celebrity experience everyone could get in on, especially youth with smaller wallets

Travis Scott's infamous 2019 photo of him eating McDonald's on the wing of his Bugatti told us he was the right pick. He met the criteria and had the creative ingredients to light a cultural fire. We would leverage his distinct sound, iconography and celebrated action figure, and create limited-edition keepsakes for fans to serve as totems of the partnership.

The Travis Scott Meal was born.

It brought young people through the drive-thru in droves, creating a (safe) mass participation event during a pandemic and breaking the McDonald's supply chain. Quarter Pounder sales doubled in two weeks, delivering $50m in incremental sales; even market share at lunch grew by 1.3% to 18.6%. And all with an ROI of $3.22 (estimated at $88m and $5.60 ROI if supply hadn't broken).