Social Media is not Appropiate for Every Campaign
September 21, 2012
By: Simone Jackson
In January, McDonalds decided to start their own hashtag, #McDStories, on Twitter. The purpose of #McDStories was to promote a larger campaign that shared stories about the farmers who grew food for McDonald, said Rick Wion, director of social media at McDonalds USA , in a comment to a Forbes post about the hastag. Unfortunately, this hashtag was not used in the way that McDonalds had anticipated.
Instead of tweeting about positive moments at McDonalds, many tweeters used the hashtag to describe horrific experiences that they had had over the years. Tweets describing low food quality, bad customer service and dirty restaurants filled timelines. Many were replying to other’s tweets and even workers at McDonalds were engaging in the online discussions and not in a good way.
These are examples of some of the tweets: 
McDonalds quickly pulled the campaign after the company saw the amount of negativity that was being tweeted with the hashtag. McDonalds should have seen this coming.
The concept was actually a good idea, but it is obvious that McDonalds created #McDStories without giving much thought to it’s consequences. When a company creates a hashtag, they are giving people the freedom to say whatever they want and then link their thoughts directly to a particular company. This can be a useful concept, but it is not appropriate for all companies or campaigns.
In McDonalds case, social media should have never been used to promote the idea of anecdotal moments in the resturant. The use of Twitter for this campaign only added to the many negative thoughts that people already have about the restaurant. Whether or not what was being tweeted was true does not matter. Thousands of people saw these tweets and it all could have been avoided.
A better idea would have been to have a contest of the best McDonalds stories and whoever won would have their story printed on McDonalds’s bags or something similar. This way, McDonalds would have been able to control the message that people were getting.
September 21st, 2012 at 10:51 am
I thoroughly enjoy your alternative idea. I could easily see a company like Chipotle or Taco Bell doing that as well. It makes the campaign less susceptible to damage.
McDonald’s simply gave their public too much freedom. Even though they pulled the campaign, people continued to tweet their horror stories/fictitious tales. What started as a feel-good campaign ended in a complete overtake by Internet trolls.
September 23rd, 2012 at 1:45 am
I completely agree with both of you — the alternative idea sounds much better than what McDonald’s did with its #McDStories hashtag. Giving the Internet masses — who can easily hide behind the anonymity of a username — too much freedom is a very dangerous thing. Finding a way to still get your customers involved, yet restricting that involvement enough to keep a positive message, is very important when considering how to market your company. McDonald’s already receives enough flack for being a fast food restaurant — it didn’t need to fuel that fire by providing an outlet for critics to assemble via Twitter.
September 24th, 2012 at 11:01 pm
I really enjoyed reading your article because I do remember this happening on Twitter. McDonald’s definitely gave Twitter users too much freedom and should have expected that not all stories would be positive. Your idea is great and I believe it would have been a big success if McDonald’s or any company for that matter would have done that. It makes customers want to write a positive review and not write about a time when they had horrible service or less than satisfactory food. Even though they took the campaign down, they still got negative feedback because you cannot just remove the hashtag.
September 25th, 2012 at 6:33 am
I think the most important aspect of social media is that you need to benchmark, test and verify the results. Most people probably don’t know how good social media can be for their business, and many don’t realize how effective social media is. Without a way of measuring the success of social media, they are blindly using that form of communication without realizing the effect it has with their customers.
September 25th, 2012 at 7:09 pm
I couldn’t agree more Simone. For McDonalds being such a large company, with such vast income, you would think their promotions department or PR department would have foreseen this coming? The use of social media, Twitter especially is a quick way to spread information. Now, if the information is negative it will spread that much quicker, too millions of users.
October 19th, 2012 at 7:31 am
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