#mcdstories

Anyone else remember that time that McDonald's tried to get people to talk about their restaurant using the Twitter hashtag #McDStories? Since this was a marketing campaign, they were expecting people to write about the great customer service or that time they got an extra chicken nugget, right? But of course when you’re a fast food restaurant, we all know that people only have positive things to say.

I'm not sure what they were expecting with that, but it probably wasn't a great idea to give the Twitter public free reign on a marketing campaign and NOT expect them to be brutally honest or just make up wild stories.

I mean, just look at some of these.

In the end, McDonald's pulled the hashtag within 2 hours.

McDonalds, arguably one of the biggest fast food chain restaurants in the world suffered a huge social media disaster the digital world will not soon be forgetting.

McDonalds started a social media campaign on the micro-blogging site Twitter in order to promote their fresh harvest and positive relations with farmers.  The initial promoted hashtag McDonalds used on Twitter was #MeetTheFarmers.

The promoted social media campaign quickly went wrong when a member of the marketing team started to use a non-neutral hashtag; #McDStories. The use of this hashtag was as an attempt to further engage consumers on Twitter.

The issue with the #McDStories hashtag was the vagueness. Since the hashtag was so vague it opened up opportunities for consumers and competitors to exploit McDonald’s promoted message in any way they wanted.

Another mistake McDonalds made was not providing any directions on how to engage in using the promoted hashtag. Thus, the hashtag quickly became an outlet for consumers who had received negative experiences from McDonalds to share their stories.

Image By: (Gus, 2012)

McDonalds tried to start a new hashtag to quickly distance itself from the damaging one, but it was too late.  McDonalds learned a hard lesson that once something goes viral on the Internet it will spread like wild fire.

Image by: (Gus,2012)

The power of social media has become vital in the world of marketing. Although there were 72,788 Twitter mentions associated with McDonalds for the day of the hashtag promotion, only 2% were in relation to #McDStories (Gus, 2012).

In the end the lesson learned here is “a dissatisfied customer tells ten people. But…in the new age of social media, he or she has the tools to tell ten million” (Gillin, 2007).

 Image by: (BigStockPhoto.com)

What McDonalds Did Wrong:

Using such a vague hashtag and no explanation on what the hashtag’s purpose was

Stayed silent about the social media issue reinforced the stories told by consumers

What McDonalds Did Right:

Quickly removed the promoted hashtag

Stayed calm and tried to redirect consumer focus

What McDonalds Should Have Done:

Stay engaged with the consumers

Reach out to consumers for support

  Work Cited:

Gillin, P. (2007). The new influencers: A marketer's guide to the new social media. Sanger, CA: Quill

Driver Books/Word Dancer Press.

 Article:

Lubin, G. (2012, January 24). McDonald's Twitter Campaign Goes Horribly Wrong #McDStories.

Image:

Lubin, G. (2012, January 24). McDonald's Twitter Campaign Goes Horribly Wrong #McDStories. 

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