McDonald's

The Objective

McDonald's wanted to drive mass awareness around their partnership with musician Ricky Desktop (@desktopgoated), a multi-instrumentalist whose beats frequently go viral on TikTok. Armed with a remix of their classic jingle, dubbed 'The McDonald's Beat,' they knew that TikTok, a platform where creator authenticity and creativity both shine, was the perfect social channel to promote this collaboration. Influential, a TikTok Creator Marketplace Partner, was enlisted to generate mass awareness for the partnership. Selected for their expertise in creator marketing, badged Creator Marketplace Partners are able to access the TikTok Creator Marketplace API and provide end-to-end managed services for creator campaigns.

The Solution

Ricky Desktop was one of the biggest hitmakers of 2020 with a string of viral beats. To build momentum around the collaboration, Influential focused on casting other musicians, dancers, and trendy tastemakers that were trusted voices on the platform and able to deliver Ricky's tasty new beat to a mass audience of McDonald's fans. The program was built around TikTok sensation Bella Poarch (@BellaPoarch), known for her lip-syncing and trending videos as well as being the creator behind one of TikTok's most popular videos of all time.

The campaign strategy focused on elevating the unique sound that Ricky Desktop created, and amplifying it across TikTok in unique, scroll-stopping ways. Influential's creative concepting primarily revolved around boosting the sound in a way that aligned with Bella Poarch's aesthetic, style, and tone, in order to capture the attention of her 80M+ followers.

To build a star-studded and unique roster around Bella who could do justice to Ricky's remix, Influential tapped supporting creators within the music, dance, and comedy spaces to add their own creative spin to the toe-tapping track. Their campaign content spanned from comedy skits to choreography to tongue-twisting lyrics, all over the signature McDonald's Beat.

All content creators were strong brand loyalists who had previously partnered with McDonald's or organically featured the brand across their social channels. This further solidified the creators' ability to not only deliver awareness for the McDonald's partnership and viral content for the campaign, but also authentically convey brand love for McDonald's in a way that resonated positively with audiences.

The Results

Each creator added something very distinct and fresh to the brand new beat. As a result, the campaign successfully reinforced what makes McDonald's so special: delicious, high-quality menu items, a hint of nostalgia, and a feeling of joyful anticipation upon seeing the iconic Golden Arches.

The campaign outperformed benchmarks for both paid and organic view-through rate and engagement rate, with the highest-performing influencer, Bella Poarch, achieving nearly double the average VTR and over 23 million views. McDonald's found that prominent text and visual overlays continued to drive up video and engagement metrics—a strong signal to continue activating with creators who make unique, comedic, or eye-catching content.