McDonald’s must have been lovin’ it.
And unlike the Chicago-based chain’s ad campaign that used that slogan in the early 2000s, the viral success of President Trump’s fast-food feast in the White House probably went over well with rivals Burger King and Wendy’s, too. If it were part of a paid campaign, it would have cost a fortune.
The Twitter aficionado’s post describing a meal of 1,000 hamburgers for Clemson University’s winning football team garnered 210,547 responses by Wednesday afternoon. Based on estimates from ThriveHive, a Quincy, Mass.-based marketing firm, that each response in a paid Twitter ad campaign costs about $1.35, those alone would have been worth about $284,000.
That doesn’t count the posts from other Twitter users — including Clemson Tigers players and White House reporters — and pickup on other social media platforms. A video posted by a Yahoo News correspondent, for instance, drew 93,000 likes by Wednesday, worth another $125,000. The benefits were compounded by coverage from television and print news outlets.
[Opinion: Mocking Trump over fast food is as dumb as when conservatives bashed Obama over how he ate a burger]
More detailed estimates of the ad value weren’t immediately available, though the event represents a welcome assist for companies that spend significant amounts on campaigns to attract and keep customers.
Trump, a self-proclaimed fan of fast food, decided on the unconventional menu because much of the residential staff at the White House was on furlough due to a partial government shutdown prompted by the president’s refusal to sign any government-funding bill that doesn’t include a wall along the southern U.S. border.
“I had a choice, do we have no food for you because we have a shutdown or do we give you some little quick salads that the first lady will make along with the second lady, they’ll make some salads,” Trump said. “And I said you guys aren’t into salads.”
The president told the players the spread included “everything that I like.”
If the meal drew plenty of sniping on social media and in news coverage — the New Yorker magazine called it “pure American banality” — it had its share of defenders, too.
“It’s a pretty cool tradition that the National Champions get to visit the White House,” Miguel Chavis, the Clemson team’s assistant coach for defensive player development, said in a Facebook post. “People can politicize anything. Today and tonight wasn’t about politics, political parties, presidents or what divides us. Tonight was about a group of young men being honored for their extraordinary feat.”
Clemson beat Alabama 44-16 to win the College Football Playoffs in early January. It was the team’s third title, having previously won in 1981 and 2016.
In the highly hyped aftermath of the dinner, Burger King joked that it had sold out of “hamberders” after President Trump misspelled its popular menu item on social media. “We’re all out of hamberders. just serving hamburgers today,” Burger King tweeted via its official account. The post netted over 356,000 likes.
due to a large order placed yesterday, we’re all out of hamberders.
just serving hamburgers today.— Burger King (@BurgerKing) January 15, 2019
