Analyzing McDonald's Social Media Campaign: MBA606 Homework Assignment

This assignment analyzes McDonald's social media campaign, focusing on the advantages and disadvantages of using social media for brand promotion and consumer engagement. It identifies the different audiences McDonald's needs to address, including positive and negative recipients, such as young people, parents, animal rights activists, and competitors. The analysis delves into the failures of McDonald's Twitter campaign, particularly the misuse of the #McDStories hashtag, and recommends strategies for designing future Twitter campaigns. These recommendations include learning from other successful campaigns, selecting direct and unambiguous hashtags, and actively engaging with consumers, including those who criticize the brand. The assignment emphasizes the importance of strategic planning and audience consideration for effective social media marketing.

Running head: ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN
ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN
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1ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN
Question 1
Whether it is a small or large organization for multinational company social media has played
an important role in promoting brand image and engaging consumers. In this digital era
popularity for digital connectivity is increasing and social media is playing an important role
in this context. Millions of users are active on social media and therefore, it is easy to identify
how effective it is to apply it in promotion and marketing. Although MacDonald is a famous
multinational restaurant chain but communication with the consumer is something that even
large organizations need to consider (Tuten & Solomon, 2017). Social media marketing is not
only cheap but it is effective as well. When brands communicate with the consumer and
engage with them actively it helps to create a brand perception and different royalty as well
(Alalwan et al., 2017). Social media companies can promote their products and deals that are
available in stores and helps the consumer to identify about this as well. So it helps in
increasing sales as well.
Although social media campaign is beneficial for organizations, if it is not done properly then
it would affect the business reputation and therefore this a disadvantage for the business. For
example, if consumers share some information criticizing company including food and
services then it would create a wrong impression about the culture of the company and
therefore, affecting the brand image as well (Godey et al., 2016). Therefore whether social
media campaign is beneficial or not what will depend on the strategies considered for it and
McDonald should provide importance to this aspect as well.
Question 2
When McDonald's is creating their social media campaign they need to address two different
groups of audiences. One group is positive recipients of the campaign and another group is

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negative recipients of the campaign. Some of the positive recipients are young people college
going kids who typically like foods that are good in taste but low in price and for this type of
people McDonald's is an excellent choice. This group might also include office going parents
who don't have much time to prepare foods and often rely on readymade fast-food and
McDonald's needs to provide attention to this group while designing their social media
campaign. People will most probably criticize McDonald's campaign are animal right activist,
people who prefer healthy foods over junk food who had some health issues after consuming
food from McDonald's some environmental activists because there has been criticising
regarding McDonald's strategies for addressing environmental impact through their business
initiatives (Keegan & Rowley, 2017). Companies who are direct competitors to McDonald's
need to be considered in this group as well. In order to ensure success in a social media
campaign metric should provide equal focus on this group while addressing the requirements
of people supporting McDonald's campaign as they are associated with the company for their
foods and services.
Question 3
As McDonald's Twitter campaign gone horribly wrong, it is important to learn from this and
ensure that future Twitter campaigns do not repeat those mistakes and create an effective
campaign that would enhance companies brand image and also contributing to their sales as
well (Thomases, 2020). First of all McDonald's should look for other Twitter campaigns from
multinational organisations and identify some strategies from the attitude of the campaign
help them to obtain ideas regarding how to drive a successful Twitter campaign for enhancing
business process. The most important mistake that was identified in the previous twitter
campaign it was that lack of planning in deciding Twitter hashtag and this is what allowed
people to distort actual Message that McDonald's was trying to deliver. Through their hashtag

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#McDStories Wanted to encourage consumer to share their own Stories related to the
organisation and engage with them. But people misuse to the hashtag and started to share
funny stories, criticizing the organisation and the campaign was not successful. Therefore the
best strategy is to consider hashtag that is direct in meaning and not easy to distort it and
relate it with some other aspects that are not intended. Although hashtag was misused
McDonald's did not interfere into that and they thought that only keeping quiet will resolve
the issue. Therefore it is recommended that if in future Twitter campaigns there is any such
issues, then they should be involved in it and need to communicate with people criticizing
this organization in a funny way and people will definitely appreciate it. Therefore
McDonald's in designing the future Twitter campaign need to consider the strategies for
ensuring that the campaign is effective and efficient as well.

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Reference:
Alalwan, A. A., Rana, N. P., Dwivedi, Y. K., & Algharabat, R. (2017). Social media in
marketing: A review and analysis of the existing literature. Telematics and
Informatics, 34(7), 1177-1190.
Godey, B., Manthiou, A., Pederzoli, D., Rokka, J., Aiello, G., Donvito, R., & Singh, R.
(2016). Social media marketing efforts of luxury brands: Influence on brand equity
and consumer behavior. Journal of business research, 69(12), 5833-5841.
Keegan, B. J., & Rowley, J. (2017). Evaluation and decision making in social media
marketing. Management Decision.
Thomases, H. (2020). McDonald's Big #Fail: What Happened?. Retrieved 15 April 2020,
from https://www.inc.com/hollis-thomases/mcdonalds-mcdstories-twitter-mess.html.
Tuten, T. L., & Solomon, M. R. (2017). Social media marketing. Sage.