‘Grimace shake’ TikTok trend boosts McDonald’s sales

June 30, 2023
The Washington Post

A TikTok trend that shows people posting videos of themselves playing dead and covered in McDonald’s purple “Grimace shakes” has led to a surge in sales for the new beverage. “If I were a marketer trying to create a viral campaign, I don’t know that I would’ve said, ‘Hey, drink my milkshake and die,’” said Wendy Zajack, faculty director of marketing at Georgetown University. “But it connects to a generation. And at the end of the day, it’s boosting sales. It’s getting people to try a purple milkshake.”

Grimace McDonalds Shake is Shaking Things Up

grimace mcdonalds

The new Grimace McDonalds shake has boosted sales for the brand in ways the company did not plan for.

We’ve already seen the benefits of the McDonald’s streetwear Happy Meal collaboration, and now the strangest viral video is going around TikTok.

This new set of Grimace McDonalds videos is not the result of a McDonald’s marketing team, rather, some random kids decided to do what many users of TikTok do; create a seemingly funny short video with the potential to go viral.

In this case, the video gained traction, and more users decided to copy the video and do their own versions, resulting in a chain-reaction of Grimace McDonalds videos making their rounds.

McDonald’s is a company fortunate for unintended viral marketing, as a similar event occurred for the brand in 2020 with one of their previous happy meal collaborations.

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