Throughout the past 40 years, Chicken McNuggets have earned its place in culture. Usain Bolt famously ate 100 nuggets every day of the Beijing Olympics, Travis Scott’s McNuggets pillow was all the rage, and when Rick and Morty revived an old McNuggets dipping sauce, it almost broke the internet. Upon Chicken McNuggets 40th anniversary, we wanted to amplify McNuggets’ place in pop culture by giving it its rightful place in culture - by putting it inside a museum. With this campaign we aimed to amplify love for this iconic product and the McDonald's brand, all the while increasing sales of Chicken McNuggets.

Although our goal is to place McNuggets into a museum, the only problem is that food is prohibited in museums. If we are not allowed to put the McNuggets into Museum, we decided to transform it. Andy Warhol once famously drank Campbell Soup every day for 20 years, inspiring his iconic Campbell Soup painting. Through this, he successfully showed the world the insight that “CRAVING IS ART”. With an ambition to make McNuggets the next pop art food icon, we conducted an art experiment by inviting a group of renowned artists craving endless Chicken McNuggets for inspiration. We not only aim to create to McNuggets-inspired art pieces, but also put these art pieces at museum.

Having been a much-loved iconic food item over the past 40 years, we wanted to not only celebrate Chicken McNuggets’ past but also bring it into the future by nurturing love of the product with Hong Kong’s Gen Z. Based on Gen Z’s creative nature and love of pop art, we wanted to amplify Chicken McNuggets’ place in pop culture by creating an art exhibition with McNuggets-inspired art by Gen Z’s most loved pop artists.

Partnering with Hong Kong-based pop art curator Kevin Poon, we enlisted a range of multi-national artists including Vandy the Pink, Jon Burgerman, UFO907, Frank Nitty 3000, and Gyuhan Lee. We fuelled their craving with endless McNuggets to create McNuggets-inspired artwork. With this collection of artwork, we successfully got approval to place McNuggets inside a museum! Introducing the ‘McNuggets Art World’ - a McNuggets-inspired pop-art exhibition at the Arts Pavilion located at Hong Kong’s vibrant arts and culture quarter – the West Kowloon Cultural District. The Arts Pavilion at the district was transformed into a McNuggets-inspired immersive journey that fuses art, technology, and culture. The McNuggets-inspired artwork created by the artists were also featured in our stores, and on our packaging, further driving product and brand love.

The ‘McNuggets Art World’ attracted over 19,200 visitors, more than double the average visitation for exhibitions at the venue. The event drove over 135 million impressions across social media. The campaign generated record-breaking first week McNuggets sales out of any campaign we ran in the past. The campaign also boosted our "Is a Brand for Someone Like Me" brand score by 4 points. In total, the campaign generated over USD$2.4M in earned media coverage.