Fast-Food Success Is Super Sized
The camera zooms in on a large woman, sitting on a cooler at the beach. It cuts to a shirtless man, also quite large, his face blurred out.
“America has now become the fattest nation in the world. Congratulations,” a voice narrates.
So begins “Super Size Me,” which was released 20 years ago last month.
Directed by and starring Morgan Spurlock, the documentary was a hit, grossing more than $22 million on a $65,000 budget. Following Mr. Spurlock as he ate nothing but McDonald’s for 30 days — and the ill effects that diet had on his health — the film became the high-water mark in a tide of sentiment against fast food. (Mr. Spurlock died on May 23 of complications from cancer. He was 53.)
Mr. Spurlock’s stunt raised awareness and sounded alarms. Nightly news segments ensued. Six weeks after the film’s release, McDonald’s discontinued its Super Size menu, though a company spokesman said at the time that the film had “nothing to do with that whatsoever.”
It would have been easy to call the cultural moment a brand crisis for fast food.
But two decades later, McDonald’s is bigger than ever, with nearly 42,000 global locations, and fast food in general has boomed. There are now some 40 chains with more than 500 locations in the United States. About 36 percent of Americans — over 115 million people — eat fast food on any given day. The stock price of McDonald’s hit an all-time high in January, and has gone up nearly 1,000 percent since “Super Size Me” came out.
Yet there was a very real image problem. A big part of that problem had to do with children, who were seen not as informed consumers but as victims of their parents’ choices, the industry’s predatory advertising, or both.
Historically, fast-food companies
have been very astute about marketing to children, realizing decades ago that creating customers early means creating customers for life. In 2000, 90 percent of U.S. children ages 6 to 9 visited a McDonald’s in a given month. By the mid-2000s, childhood obesity rates had nearly tripled over a 25-year span, and the public outcry was growing more urgent.
A consortium of large food brands, including McDonald’s and Burger King, tried to tackle the problem. They formed the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, and the participating corporations self-imposed limits on advertising to children under 13 (later 12). Today, across the industry, the ad budget expressly for kids’ meals and healthy menu items represents just 2 percent of the total spending.
Instead of marketing to children, the big fast-food chains have found something arguably more potent, with McDonald’s leading the way.
“They’re hyperfocusing on what they call fan-favorite moments, trying to essentially identify how we emotionally connect to McDonald’s,” said Kaitlin Ceckowski, who researches fast-food marketing strategies at Mintel, a market research agency.
In 2019 and 2020, McDonald’s hired two creative agencies, Wieden+Kennedy and the Narrative Group. As W+K New York’s co-chief creative officer, Brandon Henderson, explained to AdAge in March, “When we first started with McDonald’s, they were hesitant to be themselves and had been listening to the haters since the ‘Super Size Me’ documentary. I think the big shift we gave them was to stop listening to the haters and listen to the fans.”
The 6-to-9-year-olds in that 2000 statistic are now younger millennials, among the group with the highest rate of fastfood consumption today. They have a lifetime of memories connecting them to fast food, McDonald’s in particular.
All that needed to be done was to connect the power of that comfort and nostalgia to the power of celebrity.
A 2020 Super Bowl ad showed the McDonald’s orders of famous people both real (Kim Kardashian) and not (Dracula). That spot led to a phenomenally successful campaign designed around the preferred orders of celebrities. The first of these, the Travis Scott menu, featured the favorite meal of the American rapper and doubled sales of Quarter Pounders in the first week. The market capitalization of McDonald’s went up by $10 billion.
Other chains have followed, with partnerships between Megan Thee Stallion and Popeyes, Ice Spice and Dunkin’, Justin Bieber and Tim Hortons, and Lil Nas X and Taco Bell.
“It’s not directly targeting children, but let’s be clear: The celebrity meals are for BTS, Travis Scott, Cardi B and J Balvin,” Ms. Ceckowski said. “These are people who resonate with younger audiences.”
They are also celebrities who resonate with younger audiences of color, who tend to have higher rates of fastfood consumption than white consumers.
Virgie Tovar, who has written books about weight discrimination, said that for some consumers, a trip to McDonald’s might well offer the most accessible version of the American dream.
“People in my generation, and certainly Gen Z, probably aren’t going to be homeowners,” Ms. Tovar said. She added: “All these markers of what it means to be a successful American are increasingly inaccessible to these younger generations. And I think about the things that are: They’re these cheaper consumer goods, and some of them are food.”
Eating McDonald’s, she said, should be seen as “a form of civic participation — whether we want to admit it or not.”