Food marketing is easily one of the most important things in the world of restaurants. While good marketing can net a chain publicity and great sales, unwise marketing can cause serious damage to both a restaurant's reputation and its wallet. This was recently demonstrated by , but it can also be seen in countless historical marketing campaigns, including McDonald's limited-time deal that coincided with the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
The promotion itself was quite fun and fitting for its time; McDonald's customers across the country were given a card with a certain Olympic event on it, and if the United States won a medal in that event, the cardholders would get a free item from the chain. For gold medals, the corresponding cardholders would get a Big Mac. For events in which the U.
S. won the silver or bronze medal, customers were given french fries or a soft drink, respectively. The promotion was quite popular at first and garnered great publicity for both McDonald's and that year's Olympics.
However, due to the home athletes' dominance during the Olympics, McDonald's fun and popular marketing campaign wound up being, at the time, the most costly promotion in the organization's history. While it's not exactly known how much it cost the Illinois-based burger chain, experts theorize the final price tag was somewhere in the millions. What went wrong with McDonald's 1984 Olympics Campaign? If is anything to go by, it's unlikely that those Americans competing at the 198.