Timing Is Everything: McDonald’s and Taco Bell’s Changing Baseball Fortunes

Prior to the start of the baseball season, Taco Bell made the decision to end a two-decades-old official partnership with Major League Baseball. At the same time, in a move that was much less noteworthy then, McDonald’s chose to remain a sponsor of the New York Mets.

Would Taco Bell’s marketers have chosen to depart if they knew this year’s World Series would be a one-for-the-ages matchup between the Dodgers and the Yankees, thus bringing even more attention to the fast-food chain’s wildly popular “Steal a Base, Steal a Taco” promotion?

Probably not. Decisions to end long-term partnerships and reinvest or save millions of dollars in marketing spend are not made lightly. That doesn’t mean there was no regret when the Yankees Jazz Chisholm Jr. swiped second base in the 10^th inning of Game 1 before scoring the go-ahead run, even if his exploits were made meaningless by Freddie Freeman’s walk-off grand slam in the bottom of the inning.

Taco Bell’s absence from the excitement of this year’s Fall Classic is a reminder that all sponsorship decisions carry risk. We typically discuss risk factors in terms of the choice to spend on new deals, but consideration of the opportunity cost of not buying or leaving a partnership should also be part of the decision-making process.

In reality, the brands that should have larger regrets than Taco Bell are current MLB sponsors and prospects who didn’t step into the promotional vacuum left by the fast-food chain’s departure with their own version of “Steal a Base, Steal a Taco.” What is sure to be the most-watched World Series in years is devoid of a fan engagement platform that would have had a great chance to go viral. C’est la vie.

But just as partnership decisions can be the source of great aggravation, they can also generate serendipitous rewards. There was no brilliant strategy involved in sending McDonald’s Grimace to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at a Mets game on June 12 in honor of the bulbous purple character’s birthday month. It was, in fact, the type of activation that makes fans grimace: It was not especially relevant to them or engaging. It was just there.

And there it would have stayed had a victory that evening not started a seven-game winning streak that helped turn a previously disastrous season into one of the team’s best in a decade. Once fans on social media made the Grimace connection to the team’s success, both McDonald’s and the Mets capitalized on the association with a branded purple seat, a train wrap on the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s 7 line—which services Citi Field—and other promotions.

Despite the Mets falling two games shy of making the World Series, the Grimace phenomenon continues to pay dividends for McDonald’s, as fans are now showing up in Grimace costumes to other professional and college sports events hoping to bring a little of the character’s magic to their favorite teams—and earning plenty of screen time doing it.

The typical response when that type of virality happens is, “You can’t buy that kind of promotion.” And yes, while McDonald’s isn’t paying to have its character associated with all of the events where Grimace is popping up these days, it did pay for a local Mets partnership and took advantage of its promotional benefits for that first-pitch opportunity. Everything that has happened since is built on that sponsorship and a testament to the power of partnerships to ignite authentic interest from fans and others