Remember when the restaurant industry started spending money again on marketing in late 2020 after taking a beat to get through the worst of COVID-19? We could probably pinpoint that reignition around September of that year, when McDonald’s launched the Travis Scott Meal in collaboration with the wildly popular rapper.
The promotion was so successful, it helped the burger giant generate 4.6% in same-store sales, reversing a nearly 9% drop from the throes of the pandemic. Some locations even ran out of Quarter Pounders, but the return was a 30% lift in foot traffic among younger consumers.
Granted, McDonald’s — and the fast-food segment at large — is no stranger to celebrity or cultural tie-ins. I’m old enough to remember McDonald’s partnership with Michael Jordan for the limited-edition McJordan Meal in the early 1990s, after all.
But The Travis Scott Meal was different than anything that came before it simply because of its timing. The industry was reeling from an unprecedented global crisis and needed a silver bullet of sorts to lure anxious customers back and that silver bullet was increasingly a familiar face or name to promote familiar menu items. Following the success of that meal, McDonald’s pushed the gas on the idea, rolling out similar partnerships with South Korean super group BTS, Saweetie, Cardi B & Offset, J Balvin, and others.
Plenty of chains have since followed that same playbook in recent years with their own celebrity meals. Dunkin’ created drinks inspired by Charli D’Amelio, Ice Spice, Ben Affleck, and Kylie Jenner, for instance. Chipotle rotates digital menus inspired by celebrities’ orders, such as the Shawn Mendes Bowl or Mr. Fantasy burrito. Arby’s tapped Anthony Anderson and Cedric the Entertainer in 2024 to create two sandwiches and sauces. Even smaller brands like Friendly’s (Jonas Brothers’ sundaes) and Sweetfin (Vanessa Hudgens and Oliver Trevena's Cali Bowl) have embraced this trend.
And that’s just the celebrity partnership piece of the broader marketing landscape. Several restaurant brands have also found sales and traffic traction with IP partnerships such as McDonald’s Minecraft Movie and The Grinch Meal and Burger King’s SpongeBob menu. Again, this is nothing new — I’m old enough to remember the 1980s Star Wars glasses from Burger King.
But just as I am old enough to remember those collectibles, and the McJordan, I’m also old enough to know when something has “jumped the shark,” and we may be getting close to doing just that in the industry.
This year alone, we’ve seen movie tie-ins from Subway, Wendy’s, Yogurtland, Papa Johns, KFC, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Dave’s Hot Chicken, Tim Hortons, McDonald’s, and plenty others. For the public brands we have visibility into, there was little to write home about in the second quarter.
McDonald’s KPop Demon Hunters meals, for instance, leveraged Netflix’s most-watched movie of all time. But it also added some complexity, alongside a new value program, loyalty redesign, FIFA World Cup promotion, and beverage rollout that hindered the chain’s results, which included just 0.8% same-store sales growth in Q2.
“You’ve got to train your crew on that. You’ve got to put up merchandising activity,” CEO Chris Kempczinski told investors last month. “You’ve a KPop Demon Hunters message, then you have a value message, then you have a beverage message, then you have a FIFA message. It's tough to drive awareness when you're sort of jumping around … You've got to give them space, and you've got to go execute it. And if it looks great on paper, but you can't execute it, it doesn't matter.”
Meanwhile, Wendy’s Minions & Monsters collaboration introduced in early June “delivered average check benefit, (but) traffic did not increase as expected,” according to CEO Bob Wright. U.S. same-store sales in the second quarter were down 7%.
Same for Papa Johns. Though its partnership with Disney and Pixar’s Toy Story 5 “reinforced Papa Johns as a culturally relevant brand,” according to CEO Todd Penegor, the promotion did not bring as many new customers as the company was hoping for. Same-store sales fell 8.3%, and the pizza chain now has a new CMO.
Of course, there’s an exception to every rule and in the second quarter, that exception was Burger King, which found a tremendous amount of success from its Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu Meal, introduced in April. The meal, executives said, helped drive kids’ meal average unit volumes up to nearly 50% since 2022 and continued the brand’s shift from “hungry guy” to family marketing. Burger King’s 8.5% increase in same-store sales outpaced the entire fast-food category in the quarter.
Now, there is no doubt this type of marketing strategy resonates with certain demographics. NBCUniversal research finds that a majority — 84% — of consumers are potentially influenced by brand/franchise collaborations, for instance.
But the environment has changed. Brands are throwing everything against a wall to see what will stick with pressured and increasingly discerning consumers. It’s become awfully noisy with record-high LTO launches and bloated marketing budgets and the challenge now is how to cut through that noise. Remember, there’s no competitive advantage in doing what everyone else is doing.
Contact Alicia Kelso at Alicia.Kelso@informa.com
Follow her on TikTok: @aliciakelso