Would You Take a Real Bite of Your Own Brand?

Last month, McDonald's CEO Chris Kempczinski posted a video on Instagram promoting the company's new Big Arch burger. He held it up, talked it up, and took what the internet immediately called a "mouse-sized" nibble. Throughout the video, he called it a "product" and called it a "burger" only twice.

I watched it as a marketing psychologist, and what fascinated me was how fast everyone knew.

Within hours, Burger King had posted its president eating a Whopper with both hands. Wendy's filmed its U.S. president flipping a square patty on the grill himself, eating the entire Baconator, dipping a fry in a Frosty, and slipping in a pointed remark about Wendy's ice cream machines "always working." Five chains had entered the conversation, none of them naming McDonald's once (Campaign US, 2026).

What looked like a competitive pile-on was a mass demonstration of something that has been documented for decades. Consumers detect brand incongruence before they can articulate what they're detecting.

As The Marketing Psychologist, that's the moment I want to pull apart. Because the question it raises is the one I find myself asking every founder I work with: if someone pointed a camera at you right now, would your genuine relationship to what you've built be visible?

The Word Did the Work

Psycholinguistic research by Pennebaker and King (1999) established that abstract, categorical language is a measurable marker of psychological distancing. People reach for clinical, impersonal terms when they are emotionally detached from what they're describing. "Burger" is sensory and immediate. "Product" is the language of a P&L. Audiences operating on fast automatic processing felt that distinction before anyone could name it.

Viewers noted that Burger King's president "never once used the word 'product'" (Newsweek, 2026). Inc. Magazine identified the precise mechanics: rather than talking to customers, Kempczinski sounded like he was presenting to investors or his sales team (Inc., 2026). The audience mismatch was embedded in his word choice.

What makes this more striking is that Kempczinski has maintained an active LinkedIn presence since 2020, grown his following to over 168,000, and was recognized with a Shorty Award in 2025 for authentic executive communication (Fortune, 2026). He had a practiced content presence. The video revealed that you can build a content habit without building genuine product relationship, and audiences will eventually feel the gap. Pennebaker and King's (1999) research on linguistic distancing shows that abstraction in language is a measurable sign of eroded connection. The word "product" was a signal.

Language is one of the most revealing windows into whether a leader genuinely inhabits what they represent.

Why the Audience Diagnosed It in Real Time

Brand authenticity researchers Morhart, Malär, Guèvremont, Girardin, and Grohmann (2015) identified four dimensions consumers use to evaluate perceived brand authenticity: credibility, integrity, symbolism, and continuity.

The video disrupted all four in under 30 seconds.

Credibility collapsed at the nibble. Integrity collapsed at "product." Symbolism collapsed at the visible gap between a slim marathon-running executive and an indulgent fast-food brand built on cravings. Continuity collapsed when the internet surfaced every version of that gap that had been quietly accumulating. eMarketer noted that commenters fixated specifically on the disconnect between a buttoned-up corporate executive and a brand associated with indulgence, craving, and impulse (eMarketer, 2026). That dissonance had been building, and the video made it visible to millions of people at once.

Morhart et al. (2015) also found that consumers assign greater responsibility and hypocrisy to brands they already perceive as less authentic when incongruence surfaces. That's why the response was mockery. There was no charitable interpretation available.

Napoli, Dickinson, Beverland, and Farrelly (2014) showed that authenticity perceptions operate before conscious evaluation. Consumers feel authenticity before they reason about it, which means messaging strategy alone cannot override what behavior communicates. Narrative intelligence firm PeakMetrics analyzed posts across social platforms from February 3 through March 3 and found that 35.3% were humorous or mocking, centered specifically on the perceived disconnect between the CEO and the brand. An additional 18.8% had competitive framing, characterized by comparisons with Burger King and other chains (Nation's Restaurant News, 2026). The audience had rendered a verdict before any brand strategist could respond.

The psychological mechanism underneath all of this is social incongruence detection. The brain processes mismatches between expected and observed behavior through the same threat-detection pathways it uses to read tone and facial expression, fast, automatic, and well below conscious awareness. Audiences read it in real time because human brains are wired to.

What the Competitors Got Right, and What the Data Complicates

Before the McDonald's video ever surfaced, Burger King President Tom Curtis had already launched a personal customer hotline, inviting people to call him directly with feedback, and the reception was warm (DesignRush, 2026). His response read as authentic because the relational groundwork was already there. Wendy's built on that foundation further, with Pete Suerken cooking the burger himself, eating the entire Baconator, and making that pointed aside about the ice cream machines always working (Campaign US, 2026). Every element of both responses demonstrated genuine product relationship.

Zhang and Bloemer (2008) found that value congruence, the visible alignment between a brand's stated values and its observable behavior, produces direct positive effects on trust, affective commitment, and loyalty through both cognitive and emotional pathways. That's the mechanism those videos activated. Consumers respond to congruence between stated identity and observed behavior because it is the primary psychological signal that a brand is safe to trust.

Self-congruity research identifies CEOs as literal inputs into brand personality (Kim, 2015). Brand personality results from multiple direct sources, including CEOs, brand endorsers, and company employees. When a leader's visible affect toward their own product diverges from the brand's promise, it disrupts the self-congruity consumers have built with the brand. That's a brand architecture problem, and communications alone cannot repair it.

The data complicates the story, and it should. Fortune reported that Kempczinski's Instagram following grew 30% off the back of this video, Big Arch sales are beating expectations, and the video reached nearly 11 million views (Fortune, 2026). Entrepreneur confirmed that McDonald's told the Wall Street Journal early sales were beating expectations, and noted that the viral moment handed Burger King and Wendy's an opening to spotlight their own offerings while simultaneously boosting Big Arch awareness (Entrepreneur, 2026).

Adweek drew the sharpest contrast of all. Warren Buffett drinks Coke because he loves Coke; he owns shares because he loves Coke. Akio Toyoda raced his own Toyota at the Nürburgring under a pseudonym with no factory support because he needed to know what the product felt like to drive (Adweek, 2026). These leaders had genuine product belief.

The Question Every Brand Has to Sit With

This is a brand congruence story. What happens when the people leading a brand stop relating to it the way the people buying it do.

Adweek named the structural problem as “the higher you rise, the more you know your brand as a concept (its market share, net promoter score, brand equity) and the less you know it as something you'd actually want on a Tuesday” (Adweek, 2026). Growth pulls leadership toward abstraction. Pennebaker and King (1999) documented that abstraction in language is a measurable sign of eroded connection. Which means the drift shows up in how leaders talk about their brand long before it shows up in a viral video.

That drift happens at every scale. So ask yourself honestly: when did you last experience your own brand the way your clients do?

Brand authenticity accumulates through behavioral signals over time. It cannot be manufactured in a crisis because it has to have already been there (Morhart et al., 2015). The video revealed something that had been building, and the speed of the public response tells us that audiences are more calibrated to that signal than most brands account for. Consumer-based brand authenticity research by Napoli et al. (2014) shows that quality commitment, sincerity, and heritage are evaluated through pattern recognition built over time. A single video can confirm or disrupt that pattern. It cannot build it from scratch.

Every brand has a version of this question: would you take a real bite?

A committed, fully-inhabited bite that says this is what we do and I believe in it.

References

Adweek. (2026, March). The McDonald's CEO can't seem to stomach his own burger.https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/the-mcdonalds-ceo-cant-seem-to-stomach-his-own-burger/

Campaign US. (2026, March 9). Burger battle: How 5 fast-food chains trolled McDonald's CEO over his awkward bite.https://www.campaignlive.com/article/burger-battle-5-fast-food-chains-trolled-mcdonalds-ceo-awkward-bite/1950966

DesignRush. (2026, March). McDonald's CEO video sparks Big Arch social media backlash.https://news.designrush.com/mcdonalds-big-arch-burger-ceo-chris-kempczinski-viral

eMarketer. (2026, March). McDonald's CEO's viral episode raises questions about executive-as-influencer strategy.https://www.emarketer.com/content/mcdonalds-big-arch-viral-video-brand-authenticity

Entrepreneur. (2026, March 5). This awkward McDonald's CEO video sparked a fast food war with Burger King and Wendy's.https://www.entrepreneur.com/growing-a-business/this-awkward-mcdonalds-ceo-video-sparks-fast-food-war/503202

Fortune. (2026, March 6). McDonald's CEO did a burger taste test that became a cautionary tale for execs, but there's a silver lining.https://fortune.com/2026/03/06/mcdonalds-ceo-did-a-burger-taste-test-that-became-a-cautionary-tale-for-execs-but-theres-a-silver-lining/

Inc. Magazine. (2026, March). McDonald's CEO posted a cringe video. Here's the astonishing lesson you can learn from it.https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/mcdonalds-ceo-posted-a-cringe-video-heres-the-astonishing-lesson-you-can-learn-from-it/91312324

Kim, Y. K. (2015). Self-congruity effects: A critical review and an integrative model. Japanese Psychological Research, 57(4), 221–232. https://doi.org/10.1111/jpr.12084

Morhart, F., Malär, L., Guèvremont, A., Girardin, F., & Grohmann, B. (2015). Brand authenticity: An integrative framework and measurement scale. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 25(2), 200–218. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcps.2014.11.006

Napoli, J., Dickinson, S. J., Beverland, M. B., & Farrelly, F. (2014). Measuring consumer-based brand authenticity. Journal of Business Research, 67(6), 1090–1098. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2013.06.01

Nation's Restaurant News. (2026, March). Big Arch, big buzz: McDonald's turns viral moment into marketing opportunity.https://www.nrn.com/quick-service/big-arch-big-buzz-mcdonald-s-turns-viral-moment-into-marketing-opportunity

Newsweek. (2026, March 5). People compare how Burger King boss eats after McDonald's video goes viral.https://www.newsweek.com/people-compare-how-burger-king-boss-eats-after-mcdonalds-video-goes-viral-11604177

Pennebaker, J. W., & King, L. A. (1999). Linguistic styles: Language use as an individual difference. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), 1296–1312. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.77.6.1296

Zhang, J., & Bloemer, J. M. M. (2008). The impact of value congruence on consumer-service brand relationships. Journal of Service Research, 11(2), 161–178. https://doi.org/10.1177/1094670508324678