Social media may be one of the best technological creations for companies today to promote their brand – if done properly – but if not then they might as well spell disaster for the company.

Recently, McDonalds attempt to jump on the wagon of social media to raise awareness of their “healthy campaign” through #McDStories reflects an application of the use of social media at its best. However, whether it was a complete failure or not seems debatable. Despite the many critics of this promotion strategy, I personally feel that although there were negative results of this promotion on Twitter, but also there were also overlooked benefits. As we discussed in class, yes the stories that were magnified on #McDStories were bad reflections of McDonalds, but they were also well known facts of the company – the unhealthy, behind the scenes composition of the food etc…. Therefore, that result was hardly detrimental to the health of the company; in fact, it further enhanced the attention of consumers to McDonalds.

The campaign on Twitter was mainly to market McDonalds’ attempt to introduce healthier alternatives in its menu. And with the negative stories about the “McD experience” on Twitter, they can say, “Hey, look at what we are doing now” in retaliation to the critics. This in a way serves as a benefit for the fast-food chain. It shows that McDonalds is responding to the dissatisfied customers, and addressing the problem in some way. The perspective of this so called “doomed to failure” attempt of McDonalds’ Twitter promotion is that they used this as a platform to encourage customers to complain – these responses serve as a very public way of gathering market research which will aid the company to solve its problems. As Christopher Lam said in his blog Listen to your Consumers, the negative feedbacks of consumers are “golden pieces of advice” for a company. It is the most effective way to strengthen the consumer-producer relationship.