After the Big Arch tasting flop, it blew up—was this wave worth it?

I finally got hold of my phone on Saturday afternoon, and when I came across this news on the subway, my first reaction was that it felt a lot like watching a brand’s publicity stunt backfire. McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski unexpectedly went viral in early 2026 because of a video of him tasting the new Big Arch burger. The issue wasn’t whether he ate it or not, but that his expressionless face and cautious little bite really made it easy for people to think, “Even he doesn’t seem to want to eat much of this himself.”

A month later, Kempczinski came out specifically to respond, saying the whole thing was actually related to how he was raised. He mentioned that when he was a child, his mother strictly taught him not to talk with food in his mouth. So in front of the camera, he instinctively held himself back and didn’t dare chat while chewing, which made the whole clip look like he was taking part in some awkward test. Even his son called to remind him: "Dad, you went viral, but in a kind of awkward way."

How should I put it? From a publicity standpoint, this wave wasn’t really a loss. He himself admitted that he should have loosened up a bit at the time and said a few words even with food in his mouth, otherwise the whole thing came off too stiff. But in the social media environment, notoriety is still visibility. As long as people are willing to talk about it, the name Big Arch has already been remembered by more people. That’s more direct than a lot of big-budget advertising campaigns—kind of like ordering the wrong takeout by mistake and unexpectedly finding that it goes surprisingly well with rice.

Still, the really interesting part of this story is that it later sparked a kind of “fast-food CEO showdown.” Burger King’s CEO quickly responded with a video, taking a huge bite of the new Whopper right into the camera. After watching it, most people online felt that this was what confidence in your own product actually looked like. Put the two side by side, and the logic of how it spread becomes especially clear: no matter how earnestly you explain yourself, it’s never as effortless as a natural reaction.

From the perspective of an ordinary person like me, with limited time and only caring about return on investment, this was a very typical low-cost, high-exposure case. McDonald’s didn’t preach any grand message, and the CEO didn’t put on airs. Instead, they turned “awkwardness” into buzz around the new product. For the brand, that kind of exposure is pretty cost-effective—like planning to play games for only half an hour on the weekend, then casually clearing your daily quests too.

If I had to give this whole thing a simple judgment, I’d say that Big Arch’s biggest selling point right now isn’t even the taste itself, but the fact that it has already created a memorable impression through one tasting video. Looking at the trend, brand executives personally appearing in short videos is increasingly becoming something like a “live real-person demo.” If they perform too hard, audiences won’t buy it; if they’re too restrained, they’ll end up becoming a meme. That said, if netizens can keep joking about it for a whole month and the brand can still ride the momentum to keep rolling out the new product, then from a traffic-to-cost perspective, McDonald’s definitely came out ahead this time.