There are many myths and questions consumers have about McDonalds and its food. Now McDonalds has launched a website to answer any questions people may have about McDonald’s food quality. McDonalds is trying to take advantage of other online social media resources like Twitter and Facebook by creating a page where consumers can ask questions. This is an attempt to redeem itself as well as use social media effectively after a failed attempt by McDonalds in America.

In January, McDonalds in America on Twitter asked for twitter users to tell their “#McDStories;” however, this was a huge marketing failure because McDonalds received negative comments about how people feel about its food, instead of good memories or stories. McDonald’s Canada chief marketing officer, Joel Yashinsky, acknowledges that social media allows McDonalds to have a conversation with customers and that there are a lot of myths out there about McDonalds. To maximize on the potential of this new program, people who ask questions are given an option to show the answers to their questions to their friends by allowing the response to be posted on their Facebook or Twitter feeds. In addition, every question along with its answer will be posted on the new website, excluding questions that use profanity. What is left to see is whether this new transparency tactic used by McDonalds can improve the consumers views associated with the quality of the food. This idea of transparency is a good one because the less that a consumer has to guess at the better. This allows McDonalds to try to improve its image as well as reach valuable information to a larger group of people relatively easily.

Sources:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/marketing/mcdonalds-marketing-tries-a-transparent-approach/article4357943/

http://rooftopagency.com/2012/01/social-media-campaign-fail-mcdonalds/