Talking to the Groundswell: McDonald's

In the book Groundswell, the authors make two very interesting points:

• ·         Listen to your consumers
• ·         React to the public and individual posts

McDonald's is an organization that took Groundswell, advice to heart during their rebranding of the Chicken McNugget.

A couple of years ago, McDonals was accused of putting pink goo (otherwise known as pink slime) in their food. The picture below went viral and appeared on all the different social media outlets. 

Youtube:

Facebook: 

Twitter 

There was even a online petition on Change.com 

The rallying of the online community bore its ground and was effective. Indeed, a mere nine days into the petition (when it reached over 200,000 signatures), USDA announced that starting in the fall of 2012 it will offer school districts a choice of beef either with LFTB or without the filler.

 

Instead of sitting on their hands and assuming that the crisis will blow over, McDonald responded to this crisis by creating and maintaining their own online community. Why? In my opinion, the company wanted to control the overall mood of their customers. While I think that there will always be customers for McDonald low cost, low quality products, why risk having negative publicity? As the book says, you do not control your brand, your customers do.

 

With the subtitle " Our food. Your questions", the website tries to improve their brand by speaking with their customers (as opposed to yelling at them or even worse, ignoring them)

For example, (going back to the pink goo) Armand from Alberta asks about the pink goo in the chicken nugget . McDonald's responded via a Youtube video. 

 

 

This YouTube video is a great example of a effective way that McDonald invalidates the accusation of pink goop in their food. By seeing the process from beginning to the end, the viewer can not help but be convinced of the validity of their position .

and on their website; 

   

Notice the Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ opportunities at the bottom of the answer.

 

 

I am sure McDonald would love it you posted this answer on your own social media page… generating free advertisement and increase their reach into your social network.  In this interactive website, McDonald effective put in places an online community that they can respond to (read ..lie to)in case of a crisis.