“Burgergate”: What To Learn As A Small Business Or Brand

If you were on Social Media at all in March 2026, you probably saw the magical moment of the McDonald’s CEO taking the world’s worst bite of one of his hamburgers (which he called “product”), and the response from other CEOs in the fast food industry eating their own food. If you don’t know what happened, you can look it up. Not going to use this blog to hotlink to videos of people looking foolish, but the gist is that it was awful.

Now, there is no need to dive into the PR fiasco and hot mess, because ruminating on that doesn’t really help anyone. Taking a page out of the other accounts that used the moment to highlight their own menu items is a good idea, because it shows you how you can take current events to tie in your brand or business. But what is really important to keep in mind is how many points of approval something like that has to go through.

The reason this is important is because when you’re running your own account, you have to be all of the people along the creation and approval path, or if you’re hiring people then you have to know to manage these approval points along the way.

First, the CEO himself. He had to be there for the filming, as he was the one doing the content. Now, we don’t know how it was edited, but at some point he at least both said and did the things that were captured on video because, well, they were captured in video.

Then, the director of the video or whomever was filming it, someone should have given a little bit of direction to encourage a better shot if that was the only usable take. Maybe even filmed from another angle to get better coverage of the bite without making it so obvious it was barely eaten at all.

Then the editor who could have possibly made it look good with clever editing. Maybe they could have flown in an “mmmmm” or something like that? It might have still been obvious the CEO didn’t actually eat a big bite of the burger, but could have tried to make it look a little less obvious?

Then that editor or whomever was over the editor who passed it along for approval as a good edit to put out into the world.

Then whatever person reviewed it and approved it. (And this is why it is so important to have a marketing TEAM, or at least one other person who cross-checks things because you want to make sure you have a second set of eyes. Maybe a friend you trust and take out to lunch once a month or something to be a sounding board or just cross check something you’re thinking of posting).

And then again, the CEO himself who signed off on it being posted.

And the person who posted it and didn’t ask any questions along the way…

(That last one is why it is important to have a team in place that you trust, and for people along the way to have the space to question or at least comment on things from their vantage point or expertise).

So what can you take away from this?

In order for something at that level to be posted, it had to go through a LOT of approval points, or at least places where people were passing it along.

When you post your own content, make sure to move it through an approval process, even if it is just asking someone you trust to check it before you post it.

At the same time, you’re not the CEO of McDonalds, and most likely will not start a whole new pop culture phenomenon with your misadventures, so as always make sure not to overthink it too much and get yourself out there!

Also if you’re reading this hopefully you’re not someone who would call food “product” or think that posting a video of you fake-eating a food you’re supposed to love would be a good idea…

Putting yourself out there in a positive way is pretty simple when it comes down to it. So, don’t overthink. And share what you have to offer with the world in the best way!