While he was a sensation on social media, the new Hamburglar didn’t succeed at his main job: promoting McDonald’s sirloin burgers.
The menu item failed to meet sales goals, even with a big marketing push from the reimagined Hamburglar mascot D in May. The limited-time item expired this summer, and restaurants are phasing them out.
“Our sirloin burger didn’t meet our expectations,” said Lisa McComb, a spokeswoman for Oak Brook, Illinois-based McDonald’s Corp. “However, this sandwich represents action steps the U.S. has taken to enhance food-quality perceptions. Seventy-six percent of customers who tried the sirloin burger said their opinion of McDonald’s beef improved.”
When McDonald’s brought back the Hamburglar this year, the character morphed from a cartoonish bandit into a hipster dad with stubble. He caused a sensation on Twitter and Facebook, with users debating his attractiveness and sartorial choices. (In addition to a Zorro-style mask, he wears a burger tie, trench coat and black-and-white striped prison garb).
But the point of the ads was to push the third-pound sirloin burgers.
“This is why I’m back,” the Hamburglar said in one of the commercials.
The promotion was part of an effort to show that McDonald’s low-priced food can still be high-quality. Along with touting the sirloin hamburgers, McDonald’s has advertised artisan chicken sandwiches and tested items such as kale in some markets.
So far, nothing has pulled the company out of its slump. McDonald’s said last month that U.S. same-store sales dropped 2 percent in the second quarter, the seventh straight decline.
