In Netflix’s Oscar-winning phenomenon KPop Demon Hunters, the superheroes-turned-megahit girl group Huntr/x is tasked with protecting the spirit gate known as the Honmoom. Starting Tuesday, the group has a new mission: going head-to-head with rival idol group the Saja Boys for fast-food supremacy.
McDonald’s and Wieden+Kennedy New York have teamed up with Netflix for the burger giant’s latest campaign, Battle for the Fans. Building on the brand’s Famous Orders series, the new promotion is one of the chain’s more structurally ambitious efforts to date, complete with new, canon-compliant story content co-written with the film’s actual writing team to anchor the campaign in the KPDH universe.
Battle for the Fans pits the film’s two fictional idol groups against each other through competing meal offerings. The Saja Boys claim the breakfast daypart with the Spicy Saja McMuffin, hash browns and a cold drink. Huntr/x takes lunch and dinner with a 10-piece Chicken McNuggets order, two limited-edition battle sauces — a sweet chili Hunter Sauce and a purple Cajun Demon Sauce — and Ramyeon McShaker Fries. Each meal comes with an exclusive photocard and a QR code card featuring Derpy, the supernatural tiger companion to Saja’s Jinu, which unlocks additional promotional content, merchandise and social material.
The promotion’s trailer — which leaked “earlier than planned” on March 24, per McDonald’s senior marketing director Guillaume Huin — shows Huntr/x and Saja Boys urging fans to “pick a side” during a special fansign event, reminiscent of one of the film’s most popular scenes. The premise leverages the enthusiasm of the movie’s younger, faction-based fandom, which resembles the “stan” behavior found in real-life K-pop culture.
“We’re actual K-pop (and KPop Demon Hunters) fans, so we just did all the things we’d love from our favorite groups,” Aaron Araya, copywriter at Wieden+Kennedy New York, told Campaign. “Kind of like writing a love letter to all the fans. We wanted to treat both Huntr/x and Saja Boys as if they were the biggest bands in the world — because, according to the streaming records they broke, they are.”
Battle for the Fans will span the U.S. and key global markets including Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Latin America. The trailer also hints at the promotion’s scale with the inclusion of Rolling Stone covers, a real creative touchpoint that will exist in the form of a digital cover takeover with the publication. Dueling high-fashion billboards in SoHo and a one-night-only immersive event in Los Angeles are also included in the rollout.
It’s a takedown
Prior to working with Netflix, McDonald’s U.S. received a crash course in K-pop culture in 2021 with its seismic BTS Meal. Modeled after the industry’s approach to merchandising and fan engagement, the brand was able to ground the collaborations in behaviors that were already familiar to longtime fans.
“From our past Famous Orders campaigns, we have seen how passionate fanbases adopt their favorite idols’ orders,” said Jennifer “JJ” Healan, VP of U.S. marketing, brand, content and culture at McDonald’s. “This was especially evident with the craze of The BTS Meal, leading us to the fan truth for KPop Demon Hunters: ‘Their order is my order.’”
Healan also points to the 2024 Collector’s Meal — a limited-time promotion featuring collectible cups available with breakfast and lunch/dinner options — as precedent for engaging multiple dayparts within a single campaign. But where that effort unified fans around a shared experience, Battle for the Fans introduces a competitive evolution. Rather than uniting fans around one order, the campaign asks them to establish their loyalty through their purchase. Noting that the “dueling meals” concept is a first for the brand, she described success not in terms of overall sales volume but in how effectively the campaign mobilizes each sub-fandom.
“By giving them a way to ‘crown a winner,’ McDonald’s serves as a digital and physical stage for fans to turn their personal loyalty into a collective movement,” she said.
Executing that required W+K to develop two distinct creative identities within a single campaign. The agency leaned heavily on what the film had already established, with each group arriving with its own aesthetic, emotional register and internal logic. “Our barometer for success was always, ‘Would this feel out of place within the film?’” Araya said.
How it’s done, done, done
The campaign’s crown jewel isn’t the meal or the merch, but rather the story itself. Rather than simply licensing the KPDH name, McDonald's and W+K worked with the creative team behind the film to develop original narrative content that fits within existing canon. The premise was specially written for this campaign, with the Netflix team stress-testing every beat for authenticity.
“The team behind the movie made sure everything was authentic to the story and world of KPDH, as well as the voices of their characters,” Araya said. “They were amazing to work with.”
“KPop Demon Hunters sits at the intersection of music, bold storytelling and a passionate global fandom,” Magno Herran, VP of global brand marketing and partnerships at Netflix, shared in a statement. “McDonald’s deep cultural roots and global reach made them a natural partner to bring that energy to life beyond the screen. Together, we created a campaign that not only celebrates the film, but invites fans to step into its world in a way that feels playful, immersive and unmistakably of the moment. Let the battle for the fans begin.”
For McDonald's, that level of creative involvement reflects something broader about where the brand sees itself in the entertainment landscape. Healan pointed to WcDonald's, the chain’s 2024 activation built around an anime fan phenomenon, as the clearest precedent. In both cases, the brand didn’t engineer the cultural moment from scratch; it found one already in motion and figured out how to participate in it authentically.
“McDonald's has the power as a brand to do this,” Healan said, “and we're excited to accomplish the same with KPop Demon Hunters. The biggest bands in that universe would absolutely have their own McDonald’s meal, and it would become a competition between them.”
Source: Campaign US
