McDonald's Twitter Campaign: Advantages, Disadvantages, and Communication Plan

This memorandum discusses the hype versus reality of the Twitter campaign undertaken by McDonald's, including social media advantages and disadvantages, audience and stakeholders, Twitter campaign design, and communication plan.

Running head: MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION
Management Communication
Name of the Student:
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Title: About the McDonald’s Twitter Campaign
To:
From:
Date: September 3, 2018
Subject: Discussion on the Twitter Campaign of McDonald
Purpose: The purpose lies in discussing about social media campaign and the recommended
reporting quality.
Thesis: The following memorandum discusses about the hype versus reality of the twitter
campaign undertaken by McDonalds.
Blueprint: Step 1 discusses about the social media advantages and disadvantages. Step 2 is a
discussion on the audience and the stakeholders. Step 3 is a discussion on the Twitter campaign
design of McDonalds with special focus on audience and social media limitations. Step 4
represents the communication plan as per the template provided.

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Social Media Advantage and Disadvantages
The advantages of social media are:
1. It is a great information source used by millions of people across the world (Westerman,
Spence and Van 2014). It therefore helps a person in updating himself/herself about the latest
happenings. It also helps in getting to the core of the facts and the truth in the information
provided. McDonald also used this particular advantage of social media in informing the public
about the source of its food that included some of the ranchers and the farmers.
2. It helps in connecting people from anywhere and with anyone irrespective of the religion and
the location. The essence of social media lies in connecting with anyone for sharing and learning
of the thoughts. McDonalds launched its campaign via social media in order to put a message
across millions of people around the globe.
3. It helps in promoting a business to one of the largest audience (Rapp et al. 2013). Business
promotions can take place irrespective of the boundaries and the cultures. This helps in making
the business more profitable over the long run. McDonalds also wanted to make its business a
profitable one by indulging in the twitter campaign.
The disadvantages of social media are:
1. It has the power to hamper the reputation of the company by creating false stories and
spreading it across millions of people (Mao 2014). By hoping to capitalize on the campaign and
switching its hashtag from ‘# MeetTheFarmers’ to ‘#McDStories’, the company attracted
detractors who tried to ruin the image of the company through negative comments.

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2. Security issue is compromised through social media where various security agencies can
access personal accounts of people (Okazaki and Taylor 2013). McDonalds also faced similar
security issues when media started running negative coverage based on its latest twitter hashtag
following a formulaic approach.
3. It acts as an addiction thereby disturbing the personal lives of the people. The publicity of the
various social media platforms is also a reason for its McDonalds to get into such promotions.
The backfiring of the promotions in the form of negative publicity led to the creation of
disturbance within the firm.
Audience/ Stakeholders
The internal audience or stakeholders of a company include the management, employees and the
delivery staffs. The management of McDonalds comprised of Rick Wion, who was the director
of the social media. In a total span of fifty-six years, the company expanded to across 119
countries thereby recruiting 1.7 million employees and delivery staffs in close to thirty three
thousand outlets (mcdonalds.com 2018). The external audience or the stakeholders of the
company included the suppliers, customer, media and the activists. The suppliers of the
company comprised of the ranchers and the farmers responsible for growing food for the
company. In terms of the customers, the company served close to sixty eight million people on
daily basis on a global scale.
Twitter Campaign Design
McDonalds undertook a ‘Meet the Farmers’ campaign on Twitter as part of its communication
strategy. The company communicated about its food quality on a constant basis to inform the
people about not only the corporation but also its food quality. The sole driver of the campaign

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was the television commercials that featured and showed farmers having direct connection with
the McDonalds (Hill 2013). The tactics used by McDonalds lay in getting the public to watch
videos and thereby generating more conversation. This led to the creation of the first hastag
related to ‘MeetThe Farmers’. This would help in building curiosity amongst the public
regarding who these farmers were thereby prompting a click on the concerned hastag which
would enable them in seeing not only some of the links and tweets but also the videos. The
company decided to take advantage of the promoted trends in Twitter which allowed the
organizations in placing the hashtag message at the top of the trend list in exchange of a fee
(Pfeffer, Zorbach and Carley 2014). It therefore appeared on not only primary screen of social
media but also on the mobile and the desktop devices. This trend helped in providing maximum
exposure which is why it is often used for undertaking an major announcement, product launch
or providing the twitter users with something share, discover and participate (Lyon and
Montgomery 2013).
The change of the hashtag status to ‘McDStories’ led to the influx of negative comments which
acted as the limitation of the social media since the detractors took over the hastag status by
putting up negative messages.
Communication Plan
1. Timing McDonald’s officially launched
‘#MeetTheFarmers” through the
promoted trends at 12 a.m. on January
18, 2012.
2. Audience The message was posted by
McDonalds to be received by the
general audience.

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4. Key Message McDonalds wanted to put across a
message of meeting some of its
hardworking people whose hard work
contributed to its food quality
5. Desired Outcome McDonalds expected to have a
positive outcome that would give the
company an increased exposure
6. Medium McDonalds used Twitter as the
social medium platform to put
across its message.
7. Materials One should leave behind the
traditional forms campaign forms
of campaigning and set up the new
campaign based on the hashtag
feature of Twitter.
8. Frequency
Messages should be put across on an
hourly basis since an hashtag in
Twitter could be changed at the
beginning of each hour. McDonalds
used this trend to change its hashtag
status from ‘MeetThe Farmers’ to ‘
McDStories’

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References:
Hill, K.2013. #McDStories: When A Hashtag Becomes A Bashtag. [online] Available at:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/01/24/mcdstories-when-a-hashtag-becomes-a-
bashtag/#5e58ebf2ed25 [Accessed 3 Sep. 2018].
Lyon, T.P. and Montgomery, A.W., 2013. Tweetjacked: The impact of social media on corporate
greenwash. Journal of business ethics, 118(4), pp.747-757.
Mao, J., 2014. Social media for learning: A mixed methods study on high school students’
technology affordances and perspectives. Computers in Human Behavior, 33, pp.213-223.
mcdonalds.com 2018. [online] Available at: https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/careers/meet-
our-people.html [Accessed 3 Sep. 2018].
Okazaki, S. and Taylor, C.R., 2013. Social media and international advertising: theoretical
challenges and future directions. International marketing review, 30(1), pp.56-71.
Pfeffer, J., Zorbach, T. and Carley, K.M., 2014. Understanding online firestorms: Negative
word-of-mouth dynamics in social media networks. Journal of Marketing
Communications, 20(1-2), pp.117-128.
Rapp, A., Beitelspacher, L.S., Grewal, D. and Hughes, D.E., 2013. Understanding social media
effects across seller, retailer, and consumer interactions. Journal of the Academy of Marketing
Science, 41(5), pp.547-566.
Westerman, D., Spence, P.R. and Van Der Heide, B., 2014. Social media as information source:
Recency of updates and credibility of information. Journal of Computer-Mediated
Communication, 19(2), pp.171-183.

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