Should McDonald’s Have Joined the ‘Grimace Shake’ TikTok Trend?

The #GrimaceShake hashtag has amassed over 2.7 billion views on TikTok since June 12 when McDonald’s released a special-edition berry-flavored shake. However, Guillaume Huin, McDonald’s social media director, said the viral breakout wasn’t planned and the fast-food chain was even conflicted on whether to respond to the trend.

McDonald’s most likely didn’t plan its Grimace Birthday Meal campaign to go viral because the TikTok trend involves videos where people drink the shake and then pretend to be killed, passed out, or possessed while covered in the drink.

In hindsight, the satirical-horror theme was seen as inspired by the strange purplish color of the shake. The campaign also celebrated the 52nd birthday of Grimace, the happy-go-lucky yet amorphous and “most mysterious” blob-like mascot.

A single TikTok video posted on June 13 inspired thousands of others to come up with better versions. The Los Angeles Times wrote, “While the TikToks vary in production value, some are incredibly cinematic, using drone shots, CGI and DIY Grimace costumes.”

Despite the grisly theme, Mr. Huin was ecstatic that the campaign generated “billions in reach, millions in engagements, millions of mentions” online and was a top trend on Twitter, TikTok, and Snapchat for several days.

Yet McDonald’s then faced “immense doubt” over whether to join others in participating in the viral campaign. Encouraging the trend would come off as self-serving, but completely ignoring it might make McDonald’s look disconnected from the video creators and fans.

Mr. Huin said, “The campaign was already wildly successful, both on a social and business standpoint, so why would we take the ‘risk’ to jump in? But hours of watching, reading the comments, trying to learn and genuinely understand helped us see what this was about: brilliant creativity, unfiltered fun, peak absurdist Gen Z humor, just the way a new generation of creators and consumers play with brands.”McDonald’s acknowledged the viral campaign on June 27, jokingly tweeting a picture of Grimace captioned: “meee pretending i don’t see the Grimace shake trendd.” Mr. Huin said in the LinkedIn post, “We just decided to show our fans that we see them and their creativity in a sweet, candid and genuine way, as Grimace would.”