McDStories Hashtag Promo McTanks

Last week, marketing minds at fast food giant McDonald’s set out on a Twitter adventure that went horribly wrong.  After publishing several Tweets about their great ingredients and wonderful employees with the hashtag #McDStories, the promotion took a sharp left turn after followers started sharing their own ideas about the mega corporation’s offerings.

Tweets included mentions of horrifying health conditions and needing to be intoxicated to ingest the fast food.  Not quite what the company was hoping for when trying to share their guarantee of high quality ingredients and fresh produce.  The plug was pulled on the campaign a mere two hours after being launched.  A statement from the company’s social media director stated “With all social media campaigns, we include contingency plans should the conversation not go as planned. The ability to change midstream helped this small blip from becoming something larger.”

Kudos to you, McDonald’s for giving this your best effort, and for quickly realizing the error in your promotion.  My question to you – did no one on your enormous marketing team have any idea that this one might go south?  I can’t think of a single instance where someone would attach a heart warming anecdote tied to a fast food restaurant.  Seems to me that a promotion like this one would be inviting funny stories, often involving illness or intoxication.

This is a very large-scale example of why monitoring your reputation online is key – especially during special conversations via social media, please make sure you know what is being said out there so that you can take control of situations like this one quickly.  Have we mentioned that Trackur now offers hashtag monitoring?  If you plan to host conversations via social media, please make sure you know what is being said out there so that you can take control of situations like this one quickly!