How the McDonald's BTS collaboration benefits both brands.
Guy holding McDonalds food in front of a McDonalds.
The McDonald's BTS collaboration is a momentum moment for both the fast-food chain and the international pop group. Last year McDonald’s took a new approach to brand partnerships by launching a celebrity meal program that takes existing menu items and packages them as a star’s signature order. Their first partnership with Travis Scott was very popular and some restaurants sold out of some of the ingredients in the meal. Now BTS and McDonald's are looking to capitalize on the momentum.
Impact Of The McDonald's BTS Collaboration
In a memo to owners, operators, and employees, McDonald’s boasted that their previous collaborations were “so compelling to our customers that it’s stretching our world-class supply chain.” After a second collaboration with Latin popstar J Balvin, McDonald’s is now expanding its efforts to appeal to a younger and more diverse demographic by featuring K-pop group BTS in its next celebrity-branded meal. The meal will debut in the U.S. and 11 other countries on May 27th before rolling out to another 49 countries in the world.
BTS MFactor, Momentum and Velocity. MFactor is a proprietary tool that measures cultural momentum through topic modeling and sentiment analysis.
As the first celebrity meal launched on a global scale, the McDonald's BTS collaboration is a big moment not just for the fast-food chain and, but for the pop group as well. Moreover, unlike the Travis Scott and J. Balvin meals, the BTS meal will include ingredients previously unavailable in the US.
BTS By The Numbers
While McDonald's stands to gain huge momentum from the partnership, so does BTS. Since the announcement of the McDonald's BTS collaboration, the pop group's velocity has been rising. This collaboration is essential to BTS’s drive to extend the global reach of its brand; group member RM explained that while “our Korean identity is very clear, we also increasingly have a more global mindset.”
After making history in April 2019, becoming only the third group in 50 years to place three number-one albums on the Billboard 200 charts within 12 months, BTS is leveraging their celebrity musician status to partner with a global brand like McDonald’s to reach a much broader audience.
BTS’s music label, HYBE, also recently acquired Ithaca Holdings, SB Projects, and Big Machine Label Group. These acquisitions mean that BTS will benefit from the management and clout of the music company behind acts like Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande, to name a few of the artists managed by American media entrepreneur Scooter Braun’s SB Projects.
Watch McDonald's and BTS Momentum soar!
The upcoming McDonald's BTS collaboration underscores BTS’s desire to become a global pop act, and McDonald’s desire to reach a younger demographic. Both of their brands will achieve huge momentum from this partnership.