Conspiracy Theorizing About The Szechuan Sauce

I’m seeing a lot of different things about the Rick and Morty Szechuan sauce McDonald’s thing. People surprised at the fan reaction (as if something almost exactly like that for limited supply goods doesn’t happen over and over and over again), people who think it shows fans don’t understand their own show (as if people simply didn’t understand that it was a symbol of pointlessness rather than just thinking the whole thing was funny and deciding to take it seriously anyway), all that. I’m sure I’m not the only one, but I had to wonder how much of the fiasco was accidental.

After all, I hadn’t seen a huge amount out there about the promotion. I certainly heard of it, but it struck me as odd that I hadn’t heard more and sooner. The idea seemed to be to capitalize on the buzz from the incidental mention on the show, but the effort seemed low.

Then the debacle. I stopped by myself, but they weren’t going to be giving out any sauce until 1 that day. I wasn’t willing to wait around, or even really in line for any length of time. I was willing to try to grab some on Ebay, but nowhere near what it would have taken. That was all before I found out each store only got 20 packets.

Think about it though. It would have still taken some money to fully advertise that promotion, even capitalizing off the buzz of the show. There was some coverage that they were doing it, but only so much. However, there was enough to get people there for there to be a debacle. The free coverage of the debacle was stellar. Even Wendy’s helped. People LOVE a debacle. They can’t help talking about it. Sure, it wasn’t good coverage…but that’s when they announced that they had simply underestimated the demand and would be bringing it all back at a later date with supplies that would meet any possible demand. Hmmmm, I wonder.

Step 1: decide to capitalize on pop culture reference. Step 2: Let the buzz from the pop culture reference do your advertising for you. Step 3: Pretend to screw it up. Step 4: Wait out the bad press from the screw up. Step 5: Let the bad press from the screw up advertise the real promotion.

This may have been the idea all along. It sounds awful convoluted, but to get this kind of campaign for this little an amount of money? It’s not impossible, and all they risked was the business of Rick and Morty fans. Maybe the possible return was worth the risk.

It’s all just a thought, but I can’t help thinking it.