McDonald's Twitter Campaign Goes Horribly Wrong #McDStories

July 2024 · 2 minute read
2012-01-24T11:12:00Z

A twitter campaign by McDonald's backfired when people started sharing the wrong kind of #McDStories (via @bored2tears).

McDonald's kicked things off on Thursday with the hashtag #MeetTheFarmers, in a campaign meant to draw attention to the brand's guarantee of fresh produce.

Later in the day, however, the burger company used a dangerously vague hashtag: "When u make something w/ pride, people can taste it," McD potato supplier #McDstories

People took this hashtag and started talking trash. The Daily Mail gathered some of the best:

UPDATE: Here's an emailed statement from McDonald's social media director Rick Wion:

Last Thursday, we planned to use two different hashtags during a promoted trend – #meetthefarmers and #mcdstories.

While #meetthefarmers was used for the majority of the day and successful in raising awareness of the Supplier Stories campaign, #mcdstories did not go as planned. We quickly pulled #mcdstories and it was promoted for less than two hours.

Within an hour of pulling #McDStories the number of conversations about it fell off from a peak of 1600 to a few dozen. It is also important to keep those numbers in perspective. There were 72,788 mentions of McDonald's overall that day so the traction of #McDStories was a tiny percentage (2%) of that.

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.

Don't miss: 15 Facts About McDonald's That Will Blow Your Mind >

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