For years, McDonald’s had been losing relevance and share with multicultural youth, the future driver of QSR success. We needed to start drawing youth back into the restaurant immediately while building long term brand love. And we needed to do it at a time when the entire QSR category was softening due to macroeconomic factors like inflation.

McDonald’s had made progress with efforts like Famous Orders and the Cactus Plant Flea Market Box, but the battle for this audience requires constant vigilance and investment. We needed something surprising and magnetic to engage youth - ideally, something no other brand could copy.

Our core challenge was to become a part of youth culture for the long-term and to drive the business (via penetration and sales) in the short-term: we needed an idea that connected with this generation in a way that would catapult both the McDonald’s brand and business forward.

A brand this size requires insights that are eye-catching, but familiar enough that everyone can relate. And luckily everyone has a birthday, and most have attended a birthday party. And no brand has hosted more birthdays than McDonald’s.

Our insight captures the problem and opportunity we faced: A birthday party at McDonald’s used to hold a certain kind of magic.

For decades, McDonald’s was the place to be for birthday parties. But for today’s youth, memories of a McDonald’s Birthday are less and less familiar. This once powerful, shared experience was now foreign to them.

And today’s youth have reinvented birthday celebrations. Posting dozens of friend photos on social, raising money for a good cause, and/or having a “Birthday Month” demonstrate how this generation takes birthdays to the next level.

Our challenge was to make the power of McDonald’s Birthdays modern, magnetic, and something youth wanted to be part of.

To get multicultural youth invested in a birthday party, they needed to care about the person being celebrated. We’ve noticed anytime we mention Grimace on Social, the comments section goes wild. Grimace is an intriguing character invented decades ago, but surprisingly feels tailor-made for today’s internet.

To throw Grimace and his bespoke Birthday Shake the biggest party imaginable, our strategy was to “enable the celebration.” This involved creating as many Social channels as possible for consumers to engage and co-create with us. That co-creation gave our message greater salience, making it more sticky. We split our approach between starting new conversations and meaningfully contributing to existing conversations.

Between these two strategic levers, we set the table for youth to do what they do when something catches their interest. We didn’t want to mandate how youth participated, instead, we wanted to give them building blocks to make this campaign their own.

Our 4-week activation introduced Grimace’s Birthday on multicultural youth’s go-to platform, Social. We shared Birthday Party invites on TikTok, Birthday gifts via OLV, Birthday memories on IG/FB, and a Birthday playlist on Spotify. Our FIRST-TO-MARKET Snapchat activation got users scanning any McDonald’s “golden arches,” transforming their surroundings into a digital Grimace Birthday bash.

We provided conversation starters like Grimace’s social takeover, a mysterious Grimace shake, and an Uber partnership, letting fans lead the way. When fans started pushing Grimace into culture, we acknowledged it while making sure we didn’t crash the party.

We re-imagined vintage McDonald’s birthday touchpoints for today. For example, instead of in-restaurant games, fans played a custom 8-bit video game by Krool Toys, featuring Grimace and friends.

Gen Z gives back on birthdays. Using IG’s “add yours” sticker, Grimace prompted fans to add a favorite birthday memory photo. For each, McDonald’s donated to Ronald McDonald House Charities.

Grimace’s Birthday became a bigger party than we could have imagined!

We inspired participation including a Grimace TikTok trend. Youth spent hours crafting and sharing well-executed films. With 160K+ #GrimaceShake TikToks and 3B+ Views, this was the true definition of “viral.”

200K+ unique gamers played Grimace’s Video Game, but also created custom packaging, unboxing videos, and speed competitions. Fans wrote, recorded (uploaded to Spotify) 100+ original songs celebrating Grimace’s birthday. Music publications like Complex remixed famous album covers from Metallica to Kendrick Lamar featuring Grimace.

Grimace’s Birthday delivered 1.27M Social Mentions and 9.7B Impressions. Earned Media drove almost 20% of Return on Marketing Investment, far above expectations. Virality almost doubled expected traditional Earned placements and Earned Social placements exceeded goal +100x vs. projection.

As a result, we grew significant penetration among youth with +875K more Gen-Z visits vs. baseline amid category declines, driving a remarkable +40% incremental sales versus base.