Last fall, Balenciaga dropped a buzzed-about slip-on that resembled the McDonald’s fry carton. Both brands are icons in their own right, so Balenciaga releasing a shoe that resembles a global, pop cultural staple - the fry carton - was too good a story not to respond to.

The post was a proactive idea that the client signed off on. The objective was to engage McDonald’s Sweden’s Instagram audience organically.

Honoring traditional fashion seasons, McDonald’s Sweden waited until Spring/Summer 2019 to respond to Balenciaga’s Autumn/Winter 2018 “copycat move.” We roasted their design by turning the iconic McDonald’s food containers into fashion-forward foot containers.

The post was published on Instagram, a go-to platform for sneakerheads and fashionistas worldwide. The look and feel of the post flirts with DIY meme aesthetics, shot from an angle often used to portray hyped sneakers on Instagram.

The post used the popularity of Balenciaga and the fact that they dropped a buzzed-about shoe that resembled McDonald’s fry carton. Instead of a rapid response, McDonald’s timed their response with the following fashion week season for added pop cultural context.

Fashion borrowing from unexpected sources in popular culture has had an upswing recently, but fashion and fast food merging into a shoe seemed like an Internet dream come true, given sneakerheads are one of the most engaged tribes on the Internet.

McDonald’s Sweden also promised to drop the shoe for real if the post got 103 042 likes, a humorous call to action for an account with only 60K followers. It lead to people tagging their friends, sharing the news, and posting it to their Instagram stories to help the post get more likes.

Target Audience: McDonald’s Sweden’s Instagram followers

Distribution Method: One organic post on McDonald’s Sweden’s Instagram

Implementation, Placement and Scale: One organic post on McDonald’s Sweden’s Instagram

Date posted: February 6, 2019, coinciding with Spring/Summer 2019 Fashion Week in Stockholm

McDonald’s having a laugh at both Balenciaga’s and its own expense sparked a global “who did it better.” The world’s top fashion sites loved it: McBalenciaga was the #1 most-hyped on influential streetwear site Hypebeast, with more likes than news related to Supreme or Kanye West’s Adidas collaboration, Yeezy. Memes were born. YouTubers posted DIY tutorials with over 1M views. People were totally LOLing on social media and bought McDonald’s fries just so they could make their own pairs.

$3.35M ad value

300M unique media impressions

1M+ likes across the Internet

100K+ comments and shares

+2700% Instagram engagement

#1 McDonald’s most-liked Instagram post ever

Global breakthrough for a local McDonald’s account with only 60K followers.

The post helped break a steady decrease in followers for the first time in a year, adding thousands of followers.

+3,3% in McDonald’s NYSE stock value after the news broke and went viral