Ok, well this is a little off the trail of my usual talk on government processes (or live streaming), but I can't help marvel at what happened in the news today... McDonalds caved into demands from fans of the show "Rick and Morty" and sent the creators of the show, Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland a bottle of "Szechuan Sauce".
This sauce is a "joke" in the fandom, that exploded rather quickly due to the popularity of the show online, with the first episode of the season running a big joke with the main character "Rick" ranting about his passion to get the limited edition "Mulan Szechuan Sauce" no matter how long it will take, Nine Seasons if it had too, it is his series arc! (No seriously, that was said on the show).
Now this was all a big joke, Mcdonald's was never going to bring back the sauce, even though a crowd-sourced petition
almost 42k strong signed to bring back this "Mythical" dipping sauce. But....they did, at least for Roliand and Co.
 |
| THEY DID IT. THE SERIES ARC IS OVER, WE HAVE SAUCE. |
I found this fascinating due to just how much corporations (not just McDonalds) have been interacting to pop culture through various ways other than advertisements on TV and Billboards now. If a grassroots joke just happens to be brought up, or pop culture that brings back nostalgia is expertly crafted, you have some amazing things such as the cutouts Arby's makes or the "Snarky" Wendy's twitter feed that form. These companies interact with the consumer, and sometimes through the magnificent push of a joke that the consumers are producing, listen and create! I feel like at least in corporations sense, we are having a bit of a very fluid and natural interaction sometimes, compared to some advertising cases with a "Forced meme", which just feels unnatural. It is nice that they are doing this, in the end it will help their revenue due to fans loving the brand (and this totally made people love McDonalds again, hell I want the Szechuan Sauce now).
Have you seen ways in which corporations, or really anything entity, interact with consumers who pushed something in a grassroots way, via social media?
Now...lets relate this to government...Well I guess we have
This....okay, look, I'm just really excited that on my birthday Rick and Morty Season 3 is happening at 11:30 PM...it's the best show, seriously, best show, 100 years, rick and morty.
Ha! I saw this all over Tumblr! I agree, it's really amazing how much brands are adapting and strengthening their social media game these days. I wrote a similar blog about how Major League Baseball team accounts interact with each other and send memes and insults at other teams and how they've grown in popularity because of it. But also agree with you that it makes the forced or inorganic interations/ads stick out like a sore thumb even more.
ReplyDeleteThose MLB accounts are amazing lol. The NFL on the other hand has been very counter-intuitive to allowing it (with the whole GIF ban they tried to force last year). I remember a Wendy's ad that was trying to be all about "Memes" and instead felt like you cringed watching it.
Delete