The two guys who put up that fake McDonald’s poster are getting a real ad campaign—and a decent paycheck

Remember the guys who put up the fake McDonald’s poster in a restaurant in Houston just to see how long it would take for the store to notice and pull it down? They’re about to see major profit from their prank—and they got to go on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, too. So if you’re wondering if viral tweets ever lead to real cash and rewards, the answer is yes.

A couple months back, college students Jevh Maravilla and Christian Toledo created a poster of themselves chowing down on a burger and fries from McDonald’s and hung it in the lobby of the McDonald’s location they visit all the time. They had a whole scheme to get the poster up without raising any flags, and wanted to put it up to make a point about Asian representation in advertising.

They kept checking back to see if their poster was still there, and for at least 51 days, it remained on the wall. So of course Maravilla had to tweet about it, and in the weeks since his tweet went viral, more than 1 million people have liked it.

“I noticed there was a blank wall at Mcdonald’s so I decided to make this fake poster of me and my friend. It’s now been 51 days since I hung it up,” Maravilla wrote.

To be totally fair, the poster does look real. Behold:

With a tweet that popular, of course the guys ended up on The Ellen Show, and per usual, she had a surprise for them. Not only is McDonald’s hiring them to star in their own legit ad for the chain, but they’re also going to receive $25,000 each for their time. That’s a pretty sweet deal to come out of a prank.

When they got the news (and the giant checks), Maravilla and Toledo were so shocked, especially since they kind of expected they were going to end up in trouble.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jiVtXsfupo?feature=oembed

Their reactions are priceless. So many congrats to these guys on their new gig. We can only hope they find a way to sneak that painting DeGeneres gave them into another McDonald’s. Who knew a simple prank could have an ending this happy?