Analyzing McDonald's Social Media Campaigns: A Case Study for MNG81001

This assignment analyzes a case study focusing on McDonald's Corporation's social media campaigns, particularly the challenges and opportunities faced by the company in managing its online presence. The case study explores the potential advantages and disadvantages of using social media for business, the different audience segments McDonald's needs to address, and strategies for designing effective Twitter campaigns. The analysis also includes the development of a communication plan to encourage better media relations and more accurate reporting, addressing the need to recognize negative consequences, develop positive media relationships, and devise effective social media campaign strategies. The assignment emphasizes the importance of proactive communication, engagement, and adapting to changing online environments to maintain a positive brand image and drive business success.

Running head: MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION
Management Communication
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Introduction
The social media can prove to be one of the effective and useful tools for the business
purpose that can bring lots of advantages like engagement with the audiences, boosting of the
website traffic and more. The assignment highlights the overall measures of MacDonald’s
towards its media relations and its activities in the platform of social media lie the twitter
towards increasing its business profitability. The thesis statement for this assignment is to
recognise the consequences of MacDonald’s while using social media, development of positive
relation with the media and finally the effective strategies for media campaigns.
i. What are the potential advantages and disadvantages of an organization when using
social media?
Ans: There are lots of disadvantages of the usage of social media platform by the business
organization (Kohli, Suri and Kapoor 2015). One of the relevant examples is the negative
feedback and poor ratings of the company profile. Some of the business benefit towards the
effective use of social media includes
Awareness of brand – The compelling and the relevant content via the social media platform will
attract the attention of the potential customers together with helping them towards increase in
brand visibility of the business organization.
The brand reputation – Improvement in the business can be done by responding to the
developments of the industrial sector and by the responses of the public.

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Cost effective – The platform of social media is much more cheap in comparison to the
advertisements and the activities of promotion that are available on daily or regular basis. This is
because the cost incurred for the maintenance of the presence of social media is nominal and
follows the budget of the organization.
Trafficking of the website – The content of the social media helps in boosting the traffic of the
webpage of the organization (Hudson et al. 2016). This furthermore helps in increased online
conversations leading to sales.
Evaluation – Paid social advertising determines the rate of generated sales
Interaction with the customers – Positive feedbacks in the social media platform helps in the
attraction of new consumers whereas negative feedback highlights the areas for improvement.
The loyalty of the brand – Building relationship with the consumers in the platform of social
media helps the business unit grow and flourish towards increased loyalty and advocacy.
ii. Who are the different audiences McDonald's needs to address when using social media
campaigns?
Ans: The large audience and the consumer definitely play a very essential role in the success of
the McDonald’s overall ranking in the social media platform (Kane 2015). With approximately
70 million followers across the regions and countries, the company uses the enormous following
as a token of amplifies for the activities in the social media platform.
The different audience that McDonald's required to keep in their mind during the social
media campaigns is the positive as well as the negative recipients. While the positive recipients

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generally consists of the younger, college goers who love to eat fast foods, working parents who
do not have much of the time to cook for the family, singles who live alone and are too lazy to
cook. Some of the other people who tend to love the company’s food are the individuals on road
trips and travelers by heart. The group of people or audience who are more likely to have
negative reactions to the company’s product are the health conscious people, the animal rights
activists, people who had bad experiences at McDonald’s, the environmentalists, the vegetarians.
Some of the other negative recipients are the competing companies in the market like the Burger
King, the Wendy’s, the KFC and the people who are extremely loyal to these brand chains (Zhu,
Anagondahalli and Zhang 2017). While a large number of audience and customer is not at all
enough towards the guarantee of the presence of strong social media, McDonald’s uses several
other tactics and strategies for ensuring their increasing participation and brand image in the
social media platform.
iii. How can Wion and his team better design future Twitter campaigns for McDonald’s?
Ans: As a part of the social media twitter campaigns of McDonald’s, introduction of certain
communication strategy and the recording of series of commercials featuring healthy grown raw
materials for the products which contributes as fairy traditional drivers to attract customers who
had negative opinions and thought about the product of the company are some of the mastermind
ideas of Wion and his team. They furthermore utilized twitter promoted trends and changed the
promoted keywords for getting more engagement with the social media trends (Holt 2016). The
team also monitored towards ensuring the online activity of the twitter much closely for the
quick discovery under the newly introduced feature of hash tags. Wion and his team furthermore
aimed towards the awareness of the brand towards the online environment. The motto of the
team has been to get updated for the upcoming McDonald’s social media and twitter campaigns

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and contingency plans to the execution of planned conversations, therefore, altering the
capability for the changed mindset which in turn helps the company from taking the negative
comments sportingly and improving their production.
iv. Using the communication plan template, devise a strategy for Wion to encourage better
media relations and more accurate reporting. The different stages of the communication
plan template must fit together, if they do not, adjustments must be made.
Ans: It is helpful for McDonald’s to develop a brief communication plan since it serves as the
roadmap towards helping them reach their goals of the program. Effective communication plans
come with strategic measures and communication objectives that encourage better relations of
the media and accurate reporting.
Reflecting the social media campaign Wion stated that since the measures had been not
gone according to the plan. It is important to develop an effective communication plan for the
proper encouragement of the better media relations for the growth of the company.
The Communication Plan Template
Timing In response to the twitter comments of the date
of January 4, 2012, which was noticed as the
day where some of the negative media
converges surrounded the company’s media
campaign, Wion stated that the time frame for

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the communication plan should range around
2-4 months.
Audience Since McDonald’s have both positive and
negative audiences, it is important for the
organization to target the issues and the
concerns of the negative audiences so that they
can be solved or improved. McDonald’s should
introduce innovative measures and strategies to
attract the negative customers (Pfeffer,
Zorbach and Carley 2014). Furthermore
investing in the already existing customers is a
smart move that the company should opt for
increasing the rate of customer loyalty towards
its product and services.
Sender The communication template should be sent by
the McDonald's management and HR.
Key Message The main points for the communication plan
are:
 Tracking of the press coverage
 Fast answers and actions towards the
feedbacks received
 Innovative strategies to connect with
the media for spreading of the message

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Desired Outcome Accurate communication, effective, efficient
and lasting efforts and measures,
organizational development, increase in profit
margin, high media coverage and brand
recognition (Jin, Liu and Austin 2014).
Medium Choosing the right networks, giving
importance to visual branding, developing the
voice, consistent topics, regular activities,
connecting with the influencers, promotion of
the profiles and effective engagement.
Materials Abstract, overly formal communication or
language, colloquialism and personal conflicts
in the workplace (Alves, Fernandes and
Raposo 2016)
Frequency Messages and responses should be done on
regular basis to encourage customer
satisfaction.
Conclusion
MacDonald’s like all other companies from different parts of the world aims to adapt the
platform of social media for blooming up its business. Public relations, marketing, customer

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services are some of the factors that the company needs to focus for initiating daily
communication that will provide opportunities for participation and engagement. The assignment
focuses on the importance of the design of social media campaigns for MacDonald’s for the
encouragement of better media relations and more accurate reporting.

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Reference
Alves, H, Fernandes, C & Raposo, M 2016, ‘Social media marketing: a literature review and
implications’, Psychology & Marketing, vol. 33, no.12, pp.1029-1038.
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Jin, Y, Liu, BF & Austin, LL 2014, ‘Examining the role of social media in effective crisis
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Kane, GC 2015, ‘Enterprise social media: Current capabilities and future possibilities’, MIS
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mouth dynamics in social media networks’, Journal of Marketing Communications, vol. 20,no.1-
2, pp.117-128.

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Zhu, L, Anagondahalli, D & Zhang, A 2017, ‘Social media and culture in crisis communication:
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