Corporate Identity and Reputation - McDonalds

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- Did they make any other mistakes in their communication? Which ones? (164 words)

Their main mistake was not taking their customers’ different experiences into consideration. Another big mistake was not responding to all the negative tweets coming their way, they just ignored all the negative tweets and acted as if nothing was happening. This was definitely a communication crisis strategy, but after seeing this wasn’t working they could have adjusted their strategy to something like bolstering and reminding their customers that they are adjusting their image positively. In the time of the incident McDonalds was going through some identity changes and trying to get a more healthy and green image. They were rumoured to have an identity crisis, and if they responded clear and positively they would’ve made these rumours disappear. They could’ve apologized and show the happening change through the stories the farmers had. This would’ve still made the campaign a success at the end and would’ve showed that they have a clear identity and are sticking to the positive message they were trying to portray.

- What would you recommend to McDonald’s communications department with regard to their campaign in online platforms? (273 words)

Twitter is an online social networking service with over 651 million accounts. If the user is following an account, it gives them all access to read and comment on posts published by that account and also allows users to post words or phrases preceded by a hash sign, in order to identify messages on a specific topic. As a result of twitter being such a public and interactive social media platform, it is important as a franchise as big as McDonalds to portray and promote their fast food restaurant in the correct manner without being misunderstood or abused such as that in McDonalds 'Meet the farmer campaign'. It is world known that McDonalds isn’t the most healthiest of food out there. People know this through personal experiences, stories told by others and even a documentary “…..” that portrayed McDonalds in a horrifying manner. Knowing that there are thousands of McDonald critics out there, the communication department should take this into consideration when promoting campaigns. Especially when promoting something on such a large and public platform such as twitter. By doing so they are giving the critics an opportunity to bash them publicly whether the stories may be true or not. We recommend that McDonalds use more distinct hash-tags when promoting a campaign that won’t allow critics to take advantage of it and use it the wrong way. Another way that they could manage this is by using an online platform that allows people to send them their thoughts or stories and then they are the ones to publish the stories, this will allow them to filter what does and doesn't get publicly posted.

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