Reflection on Social Media Case:1: McDStories
The McDonalds hashtag incident was one of the more
entertaining cases that I have read. I found it really interesting how a
hashtag that was initially created to form happy and positive memories, was
distorted into the case that it became. People used this hashtag and created a
hashtag hijack. This hijacking was able to occur because of the company not
realizing their bias and expertise in that field. They (the McDonalds Corporation)
thought that by creating this hashtag that it would stem positive feelings
about their company but it ended up having the opposite effect.
This
hashtag hijacking that occurred came off very negatively for McDonalds and they
ended up shutting the hashtag down after only two hours. Although this
situation was not what McDonalds had originally intended, I do think that the
hashtag created more publicity for their company and restaurant. There is a
saying that “any publicity is good publicity,” I think that this hashtag case
is exactly that. From a PR perspective it didn’t look great on the company to
have those negative comments flying around about their food and dining
experiences, that’s why they initially shut it down. However, one could also
argue that they got a lot of media attention that brought people to thinking
more and more about McDonalds and what they have to offer.
If
the “McDStories” hashtag didn’t convince people of how powerful social media
really is, I don’t know what will. This was a perfect example of how quickly a
simple hashtag can shape people’s views and how strong social media’s influence
really is in our general society. This is a lesson that McDonalds had to learn
the hard way. That certain media messages even with the best intentions, can go
in a totally direction and can possibly receive some negative publicity.
Another lesson that they learned is that once something is posted, it never really
goes away, even though McDonalds removed that hashtag from the main twitter
page, that hashtag can be and is still being used regardless if it was removed
or not.
I think you bring up a good point when you mention that "any publicity is good publicity". Although the majority of the tweets coming from the #McDStories were negative, they did bring about quite a bit of media publicity for the McDonald's Corporation. I would even be willing to bet that those who posted a negative hashtag to the trending topic still eat McDonald's to this day.
ReplyDeleteNice job I enjoyed your post
ReplyDeleteKeslie,
ReplyDeleteI think you made some awesome points, throughout your reflection. I especially enjoyed the point you made about publicity. I didn't see it that way when I first the case but I can see how even though the comments being made were negative they still got the word out about McDonalds. I made me think about how worked up business get when they receive negative media content, but looking at it this way even though the comments are negative they still get the name of their brand out into the internet for millions of people to see.
Really good post. I like how you talked about looking at it as a positive thing because any publicity is good. I didn't think of that, but totally agree that it probably got people thinking about McDonald's and therefore wanting to go eat there. Honestly, I kind of want to eat there now... Probably partly because the guy behind me at the library is eating it. But I also agree that it's crazy how a hashtag can be taken the wrong way. The McDonald's executives definitely had a bias when creating that hashtag, but I also think that it was too vague a hashtag, which contributed to the problem as well.
ReplyDelete