The Unplanned Viral Success of McDonald’s 2023 Grimace Shake Trend

If you need a quick refresher on what defined 2023 internet culture, here’s a quick recap: viral girl dinner meals, the ubiquitous “what’s your Roman Empire” trend, and entire TikTok feeds dyed purple by the unexpected McDonald’s Grimace Shake craze.

The viral trend was straightforward, if totally bizarre: creators would film themselves testing the fast-food chain’s bright purple drink, then abruptly cut to a campy horror-style clip of their own staged death. The purple vanilla-berry flavored milkshake first launched as a limited-edition menu item in June 2023, released to honor Grimace, one of McDonald’s long-standing brand mascots.

While the fake death trend racked up more than 2.9 billion views on TikTok and is reported to have lifted McDonald’s sales by 10% that quarter, the entire viral moment was never planned by the brand.

“If you think we planted the Grimace Shake trend … thank you. So much. But you think way too highly of us,” Guillaume Huin, McDonald’s senior marketing director, wrote on X. “If you thought we would never acknowledge the trend … well, I thought so too at first, so I don’t blame you.”

Nearly three years after the original trend blew up, Huin took to X on Thursday to share an inside look at how the McDonald’s team and its agency partners responded to the unplanned viral moment. (The Grimace Shake just launched in Germany recently, so Grimace is currently taking over German social media with the trend all over again.)

Huin’s candid post offers a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse into how large corporations navigate unplanned viral moments, which many big brands now manage from full-fledged dedicated situation rooms.