WcDonald's

Submission 11,305

Part of a series on McDonald's. [View Related Entries]

Overview

WcDonald's is an advertising campaign run by McDonald's that centers around a series of anime shorts and a manga series promoting a new dipping sauce. The anime commercials are made by Studio Pierrot (of Naruto fame) and the manga is illustrated by Acky Bright. Online, the campaign stunned many who were surprised to see McDonald's fund a relatively big-budget anime for its ads after it emerged in February 2024.

Background

On February 20th, 2024, McDonald's posted an Instagram Reel^[1] promoting an anime series promoting their new "Savory Chili WcDonald’s Sauce." The Reel gained over 33,000 likes in one week (shown below).

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by WcDonald’s (@mcdonalds)

McDonald's campaign will feature some locations selling anime and "WcDonald's" merchandise and packaging.^[3] There will be four ads in the series and it will run until March 24th, 2024.

The name was potentially inspired by a common practice in anime of including a parody of McDonald's called "WcDonald's,"^[2] which simply turns the "M" in the McDonald's logo upside down (example from Inuyasha shown below).

Developments

On February 22nd, 2024, McDonald's tweeted a short video introducing the characters that would appear in their series.^[4] The tweet gained over 1,000 retweets and 4,600 likes in one week (shown below).

tag urself i’m BURG pic.twitter.com/C9NIOHo9h2

— WcDonald's (@McDonalds) February 22, 2024

On February 26th, McDonald's released the first "episode" of its four-part anime series of ads centering around the sauce. The video gained 46,000 views on YouTube in one day (shown below).

The campaign led to confusion, excitement and jokes online. On February 20th, 2024, Twitter user @Ecronicron^[5] joked the WcDonald's series had "already surpassed One Piece" in a Greater-than Sign Tweets, gaining 15 retweets and 64 likes in one week (shown below, left).

Several users joked that the "WcDonald's" was a ploy to appeal to anime fans in order to offset boycotts of the company related to the Israeli-Hamas Conflict. On February 23rd, Twitter user @plazynoodles^[6] theorized the ad campaign was due to McDonald's looking for sources of revenue to combat the boycott, gaining over 340 retweets and 960 likes in one week (shown below, right).