The archive · Product Ideas · Marketing decision · 2021
McDonald's burger boxes as cat beds: 100k sold out in 10 min
In Dec 2021, McDonald's China launched burger-box cat beds, sold out 100k in 10 min, won two Digitaling Awards.
McDonald's China (麦当劳中国) · QM Qianma (QM谦玛)
What it had to solve
McDelivery needed new growth and brand differentiation in the competitive food-delivery market; at the time, the pet economy was rising and the cat-owning population was large, so McDonald's wanted to use the cat-bed merchandise to bring its delivery service into young people's pet-owning daily routines.
How it works
On December 7, 2021, McDonald's China McDelivery and Ele.me launched the Burger Cat Bed: cardboard cat beds inspired by three classic burger packages—Big Mac, Filet-O-Fish, and Cheeseburger—with an internal cat scratching board, limited to 100,000 units nationwide. Consumers had to purchase a designated combo meal through McDelivery (from 59.9 yuan) to randomly receive one.
Creative agency QM Qianma used the insight that 'pets become family (萌宠成为家人)' as the starting point: in the pet economy era, young people were willing to spend money on cats, and McDonald's classic burger boxes were ready-made brand assets. The team designed three burger-box cat beds and shot a felt stop-motion animation telling a warm story of cats and their owners snuggling together in winter, using Xiaohongshu, Weibo, and WeChat to leak early information and build anticipation.
The result exceeded expectations: it sold out within 10 minutes of launch, and the rush to buy caused a system crash, with #McDonald'sCrashed# (#麦当劳崩了#) reaching Weibo trending searches; during the period, McDelivery sales rose 33.5% year over year and drove a 17% increase in new brand users, the #McDonald'sCatBed# (#麦当劳猫窝#) topic received over 300 million exposures, Xiaohongshu organic notes exceeded 11,000 posts, and Bilibili had over 400 posts showing purchases and derivative videos. The project won two gold awards at the 2022 Digitaling Awards in the creative and marketing categories.
Why it lands
- Low cost, high shareability: consumers shared 'my cat moved into McDonald's'.
- Scarcity and combo threshold drove McDelivery new users and repeat orders.
- Deliberate cadence: leaks, KOLs, organic trending, and UGC sustained spread.
- Tapped pet economy: 'frugal for self, lavish for cats' gave cardboard premium value.
What it did
It sold out within 10 minutes of launch, and #McDonald'sCrashed# (#麦当劳崩了#) reached Weibo trending searches; during the period, McDelivery sales rose 33.5% year over year and drove a 17% increase in new brand users, the #McDonald'sCatBed# (#麦当劳猫窝#) topic received over 300 million exposures, Xiaohongshu organic notes exceeded 11,000 posts, Bilibili (B站) derivative videos exceeded 400, and the project won two gold awards at the 2022 Digitaling Awards in creative and marketing.
What you can take
Turn packaging into shareable social currency: a cardboard box triggered 'give cats the best', driving acquisition, repurchase, and buzz.
Since then
After the cat beds sold out, resales of the same items appeared on Taobao (淘宝) and Xianyu (闲鱼) at 70-90 yuan; McDonald's said at the time that there were no plans to increase quantity, but it would continue to release interesting merchandise. The cat bed later became a signature merchandise series for McDonald's China: in November 2023 it launched the Bag Cat Bed (袋袋猫窝) inspired by takeout paper bags, continuing the pet-merchandise line of the 'McMen Universe (麦门宇宙)'.
Sources
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