McDonald’s Has Mc’Egg on Its Face Again

Whether the old school marketers agree or not, social media is here to stay and many companies – including the BIG ones – are still experimenting and learning how to engage prospects and customers via social networks. Last summer we wrote about the importance of every business having and controlling their social media presence BEFORE social media is used against them by consumers. You can read that article here. Why is it important to control your company’s social media presence before there’s a crisis? If your company has to respond to a social media/PR nightmare and you haven’t already been engaged in social media then you are a day late to the game. McDonald’s continues to learn this lesson, and it’s an important one for ALL businesses regardless of size!

This time McDonald’s social media marketing team made a mistake in their recent Twitter campaign. They asked for #McDStories on Twitter and instead of getting a deluge of “I can’t live without my daily french fries #McDStories” they got a lot of “I’d rather eat my own diarrhea than McDonald’s #McDStories” Wow – who would have thought that one of the most popular fast food chains in history would have so many #haters? We understand the vegetarians and the animal activists who disagree with the meat sourcing and preparations (it is kind of gross when you think about where that hamburger came from!). But, it was unexpected by all that the #McDStories hashtag would be hijacked by the haters on Twitter so quickly.

Because McDonald’s has a well developed social media presence this is not fatal to their brand. But imagine if this was the first time you heard about McDonald’s – would anything they subsequently said or did after the criticism change your opinion of them? Probably not. That’s why your company must get ahead of any negatives by having a well developed and refined social media presence. No one will listen to you if you suddenly decide to respond to negative stories if they had never heard of you before the negatives. Sure, we’re using a huge company as an example but just imagine this business nightmare on a smaller scale when some dissatisfied customers start posting on Facebook that your company and its products suck and are awful. Will it be too late to effectively use social media to respond to the criticisms? It just may be. So what are you waiting for? Get going with your company’s social media presence now.

 

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