This past month, McDonald's created a Twitter campaign that was intended for customers to talk about McDonald's in a positive light, but the campaign backfired instead and led to many negative and derogatory tweets.
McDonald's created hashtags for the campaign such as #McDStories and #MeetTheFarmers and that led to people tweeting harsh and negative comments about the quality of food. McDonald's social media director, Rick Wion, said the company is "learning" from the experience.
In the past, McDonald's has had successful Twitter campaigns, but those campaigns were more controlled and specific and did not lead to negative tweets against the company. One reason this past campaign may have failed was because of the broad topic and it was less controlled than previous campaigns.
All companies need to be careful when they create hashtags and campaigns because that gives people the freedom to write whatever they want and sometimes they don't always have the nicest things to say in return.
I think McDonald's handled the situation very well considering the harsh comments said about their company on Twitter and the fact that they were up front and honest by admitting their failure during this campaign showed that they are willing to learn from the social media mistakes made and that they will create more specific hashtag campaigns in the future to get postive feedback instead.
By: Lindsey O'Neal
http://www.prweekus.com/mcdonalds-learns-lesson-from-twitter-campaign/article/224533/
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4 comments:
We always talk about how fantastic social media is, but we never discuss the possible negative outcomes. What I've learned is that social media can give consumers a very loud voice and instantly.
I agree, I mean, we expect it to always be a positive thing, but there can be downfalls to it.
I think we can all learn a lesson from McDonald's backfired twitter plan.
Sometimes social media can be a negative thing, especially if your campaign is too vague!
With all of the negative McDonald's stories out there, the PR department was idiotic for trending this. I love McDonald's, but I have heard more bad than good from people that I know!
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