McDonald's Twitter Campaign: Managing Risks in Social Media Marketing

This case study examines McDonald's Twitter campaign, which aimed to promote fresh products but backfired due to negative customer feedback. The campaign, intended to leverage social media's benefits like brand awareness and cost-effective marketing, was quickly hijacked by users expressing grievances about food quality. The analysis highlights the risks of social media marketing, including the rapid spread of negative sentiment and misinterpretations. The study suggests strategies for McDonald's to improve its social media presence, such as targeting teenagers, using website cards for better engagement, and crafting emotionally resonant advertisements. A communication plan is proposed to foster better media relations and transparent reporting, emphasizing the importance of understanding audience needs and maintaining consistent follow-up to prevent future crises. Desklib provides access to this and other solved assignments for students.

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McDonald's Twitter Campaign
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Interoffice Memo
To
The Managing Director, Senior Managers, Deputy Managers, Assistant Managers of
McDonald’s
From: Director of Social Media, Rick Wion
Date: 31/08/18
To whom it may concern
This is concerned with the different issues faced by McDonald’s due to their Twitter Campaign.
McDonald’s have twitted on social media with hashtags meet the farmers as a campaign to lure
the attention of the consumers their brand’s guarantees given on the use of fresh products. Earlier
the fast-food chain has shown the progression of their business due to the presence on the social
media sites. The team has enjoyed the various advantages of social media. Brand awareness was
created on different networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and the brand reputation was
maintained in the social media itself. The business found that the presence of social media was
immensely cost-effective and the business even delivered an improved customer service due to
their virtual presence. Since McDonald’s have benefitted in targeting their social presence, it was
a good decision to tweet on their use of farm fresh food on Twitter. The organization, hence,
promoted tweets with the help of Twitter’s advertising system for sharing McDonald’s stories
along with the whole world (Ferrera, 2015). However, this tweet was backfired against the
business with an unleashing of massive abusive tweets showing how digital marketing can
backfire. Different negative stories were concocted using the MacD Stories, the clickable hashtag
was very swiftly hijacked by customers with the help of their smartphones, and on the social
media, they vented out their grudges against the organisation related to food poisoning. This was
some of the greatest disadvantages faced by McDonald’s on a social media platform.
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Social Media played a pivotal role in this case and the disadvantages have severely disrupted the
functioning of the organization (Sexton, 2015). It is evident that clicking on a hashtag will take a
visitor to the recent and popular tweets and in this case; it was all dominated by several hostile
messages. Another disadvantage of social media can be rendering the marketing team of the
company disruptive as the more people tweeted against the food quality of this fast-food chain,
the more was the fire spreading among all people who are connected on the virtual platform.
Another disadvantage of social media faced by McDonald’s was the lack of proper and distinct
communication among the people. It has often happened that due to lack of physical
communication, the exchange of words on social media is wrongly interpreted. This has even
gone viral without any cause. This has what happened in the Twitter case of the company. When
the people started posting about the food qualities of Mac Donald’s, people have not applied
their thoughtfulness and understanding and this is one of the severe disadvantages of Mac
Donald’s.
McDonald’s have to address the most precious audience i.e. their valued customers in the social
media campaigns. The targeted audiences of MacDonald’s are mostly teenagers and the fast food
lovers who are especially addicted to the burgers served by them. The teenagers are the most
important source through which the business can flourish and concentration on social
campaigning can help the business to overcome the challenges created due to the twitter
campaign (Bal et al., 2017). Teenagers are the ones who use the social media maximally and
they would not support the outrageous allegations brought against McDonald’s, which would
prove to be an important asset for managing the issue regarding the twitter campaign. Moreover,
the investors also have to be addressed so that they do not get a wrong impression of this fast-
food chain (Giacomucci, 2014).
It is important for the team to chose their campaign as per their goals and make effective use of
website cards so that more and more people can get attracted to the tweets. Customisation on the
card should be done in such a way that people are redirected to the site. This card will give a
conversion tracking data that will show what is working for the business and can even be
customized for better performance. A different advertisement that creates an emotional
attachment with the customers should be considered and most importantly it is significant to be
very subtle in the verbiage (Hayes, 2017).
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A communication plan has been designed for encouraging a better relationship with media and
better form of reporting.
COMMUNICATION PLAN
Project
Objectives(High Level)
 To encourage a better relationship with media and enhance
the form of reporting
 To improve on the presence of the business on Twitter
 To develop an emotional attachment to the customers
Targeted
Audience(Stakeholders)
 Teenagers
 Kids
 Adults, especially fast food lovers
Stakeholder name Information
to be shared
Frequency Location Purpose Mechanism
Who What When Where Why How
Customers, Investors,
Employees
Growing
relation with
social media
Current
issues
Proper and
better ways
of reporting
For
customers
and
investors: a
video chat
only on
Friday
For
employees
on a
regular
basis
For
employees
reporting
ways can be
explained in
the business
and
conference
hall of the
organization
For
customers
and
investors,
The
current
situation
related to
social
media
Identify
current
issues
and find
solutions
for it.
Confirm
scope and
Status
meetings
Online
Meetings
Seminars
Campaigns
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the social
media
platform has
to be used
goal in
following
the path
Sponsor for social media
campaigns
Social
Media
Campaigns
(Budget)
on the
preferred
and
selected
date of the
campaign
Meeting
room B
McDonald’s
or online
meeting
Discuss
the
Budget
and
resource
allocation
as well as
risk
Presentation
A strategy that can be used for encouraging better media relations and better reporting are
discussed here:
Objectives:
 To enhance the social media presence by identifying better media contacts
 To diminish the use of scientific language and keep the verbiage simple yet strong
 To track the media contacts as well as publications.
 To improve on the form of reporting by the employees
McDonald’s must identify their targeted audiences on the social media platform and use
transparent communication skill to build a loyal relationship with them. It is important to cater to
the requirements of the audience, rather than promising about the same (McGuire et al., 2015).
McDonald’s have to conduct a proper follow-up on the social media sites, failure to which can
create another situation like the present Twitter Campaign. Better Reporting can be done by
setting good examples among employees and even communicate responsibilities and values.
Thank You
Rick Wion (Managing Director, Social Media)
McDonald’s
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References
Bal, A.S., Weidner, K., Hanna, R. and Mills, A.J., 2017. Crowdsourcing and brand
control. Business Horizons, 60(2), pp.219-228.
Ferrara, E., 2015. Manipulation and abuse on social media by emilio ferrara with ching-man au
yeung as coordinator. ACM SIGWEB Newsletter, (Spring), p.4.
GIACOMUCCI, M., 2014. Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Media in Business. Technology
and Communication.
Hayes, T.J., 2017. # MyNYPD: Transforming Twitter into a Public Place for Protest. Computers
and Composition, 43, pp.118-134.
McGuire, M. and Kampf, C., 2015, July. Using social media sentiment analysis to understand
audiences: A new skill for technical communicators?. In Professional Communication
Conference (IPCC), 2015 IEEE International (pp. 1-7). IEEE.
Sexton, D.E., 2015. Managing brands in a prickly digital world. Journal of Advertising
Research, 55(3), pp.237-241.
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