Post 1: Analyze Communication

On September 4th, 2020, one of the biggest stars in hip-hop, Travis Scott, announced the official collaboration between his music label “Cactus Jack” and the largest fast-food chain in the world, McDonald’s. Social media has been buzzing from the rapper’s incredibly large fan base, ever since the announcement.

From September 8th – October 4th, Travis Scott’s favorite McDonald’s meal, “The Travis Scott Meal” will be available for fans and customers at participating store locations. It comes with a Quarter Pounder with cheese, bacon, and lettuce; medium fries with BBQ sauce; and a sprite, for $6. Alongside the meal, Cactus Jack designed custom t-shirts for McDonald’s employees to where throughout the month.

This isn’t the first time that McDonald’s has collaborated with a celebrity for a meal deal. However, this is the first time its happened since the collaboration with basketball legend, Michael Jordan back in 1992.

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The insight from this ad campaign probably came from the consumer trends among the Gen Z demographic. McDonald’s and other brands find that our age demographic is the most complicated and hardest to reach. McDonald’s has had success in the past building the brand recognition and cementing itself within previous generations. Through their research, they probably found that they were falling behind other competitors in keeping younger audiences engaged. Or that our generation has been eating McDonald’s a lesser rate when compared to other age audiences.

Travis Scott is one of today’s most influential artists in hip-hop, pop culture, fashion, and especially among the Gen Z audience. When you observe his career decisions, marketing promotions, and overall branding, it becomes more clear as to why McDonald’s chose him as the face of the Gen Z campaign. In April 2020, Travis Scott collaborated with game developer Epic Games to host an in-game virtual concert on their most popular game, “Fortnite.”

Fortnite was a game that had the largest stronghold among younger audiences at one point. Seeing that Travis Scott and the game platform shared similar audiences, it made sense for the collaboration to occur. While it didn’t “revive” the game, it did cause many people to relaunch the game after a while to experience the in-game concert.

How does this relate to the Golden Arches?

Travis Scott’s collaboration with Fortnite served as “proof of concept” for Scott and his team. He was able to tangibly show that he does have a large influence over one of the most increasingly difficult audiences to reach. Without extensive research on their part, along with proof of concept, I don’t think that McDonald’s would have collaborated with Travis Scott.

Without a doubt, this campaign will not resonate with everyone. Especially when the overall campaign is put into context with the national and political climate surrounding the election; the Covid-19 pandemic; and the movement to end racism and police brutality in black and brown communities across the nation. The campaign will definitely receive criticism from supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement and social justice advocates for taking the spotlight away from the growing movements to end police brutality. Their criticism is rightfully justified.