McDonald's Arch Deluxe — the strategy behind it | Stratrix

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The Arch Deluxe Didn't Cost $100 Million. It Cost McDonald's the Truth.

The Arch Deluxe is remembered as McDonald's $100M flop. The number matches none of the documented line items - analysts at the time cited $100M, but the ad budget alone was $70M at launch, ballooning past $200M in total. The real failure wasn't the spend. It was a focus group that told McDonald's exactly what it wanted to hear.