The Scoop: How McDonald’s learned to ignore the haters

Twenty years ago, “Supersize Me” threw McDonald’s into disarray. The documentary, which saw Morgan Spurlock eat only McDonald’s for 30 days, led to what the New York Times called “the high-water mark in a tide of sentiment against fast food.” Everywhere you turned was criticism of the health content of McDonald’s food, its record of advertising to children, its labor practices and its environmental impact.

That inflection point ushered in an era in which McDonald’s was, according to Wieden+Kennedy co-chief creative officer Brandon Henderson, “hesitant to be themselves and had been listening to the haters since the ‘Super Size Me’ documentary.”

So the brand stopped listening to the people who hated them and begin truly tuning into what fans wanted.

In the intervening years, “Supersize Me” itself has come under criticism for researchers’ inability to replicate Spurlock’s results while McDonald’s has roared back stronger than ever.

The cornerstone of the strategy that brought McDonald’s back to its prior market domination was the idea that, “No matter who you are, everyone has a McDonald’s order.”

That ethos has played out in a myriad of successful partnerships with celebrities, including Travis Scott, Cardi B and BTS, which allows consumers to copy their idols’ exact order.

This isn’t without controversy. Many have criticized McDonald’s for shifting its overt advertising to children via the Happy Meal to a more covert strategy of employing celebrities who appeal to kids, especially Black children. The net impact is that kids are ordering off the adult menu earlier.

The results, however, are huge: With the Travis Scott promotion, sales of quarter pounders doubled in a week.

Why it matters: All brands have detractors. Any brand with the cultural cache of a McDonald’s is going to have a lot of haters. And there are times when you need to respond to negative PR, as McDonald’s did after the documentary by removing its “Supersize” option from the menu. (The brand  claims the timing had nothing to do with the documentary. Sure.) But there also comes a time when you have to be yourself and embrace what people love about the brand.

McDonald’s isn’t health food, even if it has a couple salads on the menu. It’s, as the venerable Cookie Monster would put it, a sometimes food. By apologizing for what it was, McDonald’s didn’t endear itself to the haters and made its true fans feel uncomfortable. By homing in on the meaningful parts of the McDonald’s experience and creating bonds between people, its team has seen success.

This isn’t to say that companies shouldn’t have a social conscience or be aware of how their actions impact the public, especially children. But there can be a balance between responsibility and self-flagellation.

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Allison Carter is editor-in-chief of PR Daily. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.