For anime fans, the name “WcDonald’s” isn’t new. The fictional version of McDonald’s has shown up in anime since the 1980s as a way for shows to reference the fast feeder without being sued. It is the kind of legal runaround that might have corporate lawyers ready to pounce. But for its newest campaign, McDonald’s embraced the trademark trickery.

The chain put the WcDonald’s moniker at the heart of an effort that includes a new sauce, manga-inspired packaging and four short anime episodes that McDonald’s will distribute on a special website.

“I’m sure that would have been a hard conversation to have a few years ago with the legal team,” said Tass Tsitsopoulos, group strategy director at Wieden+Kennedy New York, McDonald’s lead U.S. creative agency that was involved in the campaign. Now, “We want to take this copyright problem and use it to connect with fans.”

The campaign, which debuted last month, is an example of how the world’s largest fast food chain has loosened the reins on its once heavily scripted marketing approach as it taps into rising trends in a move to drive loyalty in communities such as anime enthusiasts, streetwear savants and more.

McDonald’s has moved away from a marketing calendar driven by limited-time seasonal offers to focus on “fan truths”—a moment, memory, ritual, or behavior related to McDonald’s—and where such moments intersect with subcultures involving celebrities, music, fashion, TV and movies, childhood nostalgia and, now, anime. The goal is to use data and social listening to have fans tell McDonald’s what is interesting to them, and see where the brand may already have a connection to those interests as a way to keep up with culture and remain authentic to fans.

Tariq Hassan, McDonald’s chief marketing officer, likened finding those intersections of trends to watching many small pots on a stove—some may be warm, simmering, or boiling. “We are looking for when they are just starting to simmer,” Hassan said in a recent interview. “Because if they have boiled over, it’s too late.”

In the past, McDonald’s was “really transaction-focused,” Hassan said, suggesting the strategy risks brands trying to “discount your way to success—and bluntly, that was not working anymore.”

Read more: McDonald’s leans into anime

Staying at the leading edge of culture is not easy for a corporate behemoth such as McDonald’s, which must satisfy varying constituencies at once, including franchisees in every corner of the country. But the 70-year-old company has no choice but to find new ways to drive loyalty if it wants to continue to grow, suggested one expert.

“McDonald’s has an interesting challenge,” said Marina Cooley, associate professor of marketing at Emory’s Goizueta Business School. “At one point, nine out of 10 Americans had eaten at McDonald’s at least once a year. It’s not necessarily an issue of finding new customers, it's having them come back again and again.”

Campfires and fireworks

To do this, McDonald’s has started talking to subcultures with individual campaigns, rather than trying to entice the majority of consumers at once.

This marketing shift began with Travis Scott in 2020, when the brand teamed up with the rapper to promote his go-to order—a Quarter Pounder with cheese, bacon and lettuce, and fries, with BBQ sauce and a Sprite. It was rooted in the fan truth that everyone, even famous people, has a McDonald’s order. It was a huge hit—Quarter Pounder sales doubled in the first week— and was followed by other “famous orders” efforts starring a range of celebs, including Saweetie, J Balvin and BTS. While the chain has since ended “famous orders,” the larger strategy lives on.

“Travis Scott’s meal was the moment we learned how to shift from having a conversation brand-to-fan, to having a conversation fan-to-fan,” Hassan said. “Not to give away the secret sauce, but that is the simplicity of how we approach these ideas. How do we approach these conversations as if we were sitting down at a restaurant, across from our friends as a fan of the brand?”

Since then, McDonald’s has used fan truths as a core starting point for campaigns. Hassan credits W+K for identifying these truths. 

For instance, the idea for 2022’s Cactus Plant adult Happy Meal campaign came from a big consumer reaction to a short tweet the brand made about consumers not realizing they had eaten their last Happy Meal as a kid.

The Cactus Plant Flea Market streetwear brand was founded by Cynthia Lu, whose memories of McDonald’s were tied to spending time with her friends. That association sparked the adult Happy Meal toys, which included McDonaldland characters shown with the four-eyed style used by Cactus Plant.

Last year, McDonald’s found more pop culture gold with the Grimace Birthday Meal, which includes a berry-flavored purple milkshake and stemmed from the nostalgia of childhood birthdays spent at a McDonald’s Playplace. The effort sparked a TikTok trend of people posting videos of pretending to pass out after drinking the shake, including some suggesting the shake has the same effects as lean or “purple drank,” a recreational drug drink. It was risky marketing territory, but McDonald’s leaned into it, however subtly, in yet another example of how the chain has taken risks that are paying off.

As for the anime campaign, “It’s too early to share any true sales metrics, but WcDonald’s is performing above the forecasting standard that we set,” Hassan said. 

Tsitsopoulos called McDonald’s historical connection to anime “a gift.” Once considered a niche interest, anime has become a broad and beloved genre, with celebrities such as Megan Thee Stallion, John Cena and Megan Fox sharing their love for certain shows.

Also read: Marketers use anime to reach Gen Z 

Finding fan truths

As it keeps its eye out for the next bubbling trend to jump on, McDonald’s is getting advice from the outside. For instance, in May 2023, Hassan brought in Marcus Collins, the former head of strategy at W+K New York, to be McDonald’s “professor in residence” to help the chain get comfortable internally with engaging in culture, and understanding how to connect with fans through cultural artifacts, language and behaviors. Collins is an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Michigan’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business, and the author of “For the Culture,” a book about how powerful cultural norms are when it comes to human behaviors.

“If you think about customers on a bell curve, most marketers are focusing on the middle—the largest population,” Collins said. “Those people are less likely to try new things. But folks to the left or right of that, those subcultures are more receptive. And if you authentically show up there, those mega-fans go preach the gospel to others, and there is more credence from those people than any brand could ever have.

“It’s like campfires and fireworks,” he continued. “The fireworks are for everyone to see. A campaign that speaks to a certain set of fans, that’s a campfire where we can bring them together.”

Finding these smaller fan bases is why McDonald’s partnered with Cactus Plant Flea Market over larger streetwear brands such as Supreme, and Travis Scott over Jay-Z, he said.

“People would see that and say that Jay-Z just got a fat check,” Collins said. “But Travis Scott had receipts of him already being a McDonald’s fan.”

W+K and McDonald’s are constantly on the lookout for where fan truths overlap with a subculture, but finding the next subculture is a mix of art and science. McDonald’s has access to plenty of consumer data—150 million global consumers are signed up for its loyalty program and it also gets third-party delivery data and leans heavily on social listening. But when it comes to deciding which subculture to lean into next, W+K and McDonald’s say they don’t have a specific benchmark. But there is one important guiding principle: Tsitsopoulos says that data has to show that a trend must be relevant in 12 to 18 months, which is how long the campaign planning process can take. 

“It has to survive that long lead time,” Tsitsopoulos said. “We want to make sure it will still be on the rise and not just a fad.”

He points to NFTs as a subculture idea that did not have the needed staying power. McDonald’s, like dozens of other brands, dabbled in the digital collectibles, releasing a McRib NFT. But there were too many unknowns with NFTs, nor did they seem tied to a fan truth. 

“They were not so embedded in culture that we thought they would be there 18 months out,” he said. Indeed, the NFT hype faded almost as fast as it began.

For other brands looking to take a page out of McDonald’s playbook, Collins encourages them to find their own fan truths. He points to KFC’s Jack Harlow partnership, or White Castle’s Fat Joe sliders as similar executions to McDonald’s Travis Scott meal, but not the same strategy.

“Find out what is true about you. How do your customers see the world?” Collins said. “And where do you intersect with those beliefs or artifacts?”

The goal is to authentically connect with fan groups, and hopefully bring in new customers. But Emory’s Cooley noted that being “cool” is also a way to make McDonald’s more approachable and combat the negative connotations consumers can have of a giant, global corporation.

“McDonald’s is a goliath,” Cooley said. “They have to make that work for them.” She pointed to the chain’s “As Featured In” campaign, which ran last year and played off of the many TV shows, movies and songs that have also referenced McDonald’s, including “Seinfeld” and “Space Jam.”

“That is a goliath thing to be that big in culture, but they spin it as a positive part of culture,” Cooley said.

New sauces over sneakers

McDonald’s marketing shift was in part driven by the pandemic, Hassan said. At the height of COVID, the chain slimmed down its menu to avoid supply chain issues. Even now, McDonald’s will often give existing items new packaging or make smaller menu upgrades, rather than introducing wholesale menu changes. One example: adding sauces to liven things up.

The Travis Scott meal included BBQ sauce, as did the Saweetie meal, which also came with Sweet ‘N Sour sauce, and was renamed “Saweetie ‘N Sour” sauce in honor of the rapper. BTS’s meal featured sweet chili and cajun sauces. In 2022, McDonald’s brought back its Szechuan sauce for app users. Last year, it rolled out a Sweet and Spicy Jam sauce and a Mambo sauce inspired by the Washington, D.C. area. The WcDonald’s campaign features a savory chili sauce.

“A new sauce is an easy way to squeeze relevance out of existing menu items,” said Adam Chandler, journalist and author of the book “Drive-Thru Dreams.” “Fans want to try the new sauce, but it's an easy sell to franchisees, who don’t have to teach employees something new or buy a new piece of equipment.”

But despite its menu and marketing wins, McDonald’s is still dealing with headwinds that are affecting other fast feeders, including higher labor and food costs. McDonald’s U.S. comparable sales were up 4.3% in the fourth quarter, down from a 10% jump in the same period in 2022. McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski told analysts that McDonald’s saw fewer consumers who make under $45,000 a year because eating at home was more affordable. 

That consumer belt-tightening makes McDonald’s culture plays all the more important, Cooley suggested. “Sharing that you are trying the new McDonald’s item, you aren’t just buying the food, you’re getting some cultural capital,” she said. “While younger consumers might have lower socio-economic means, when we talk about social currency, McDonald’s is a more approachable treat than the $180 sneaker drop.”