Can I get some social strategy with that Big Mac?

When I think back to childhood memories, McDonald’s always brings back a smile.  As a young kid I remember the “You deserve a break today” jingle, the entire meal for a dollar, and yes, the day I was old enough to get my first Big Mac.  As a child, going to McDonald’s was something special.

I was excited to chat with Heather Oldani who is the Director of PR for the US at McDonald’s.  While we did not discuss Happy Meals, Ronald McDonald, or even the Hamburgler, we covered a lot of ground regarding their approach to social media.  The approach is slow and methodical, but it is an approach that I feel will really pay off for the company over the course of the next few months.

 McDonald’s began working in the social media space about 2 years ago, viewing it as a great platform to engage with their customers.  As they ran campaigns around new food and other topics, they would always step back and debrief.  The goal, simple.  Identify what was not working and fix it or throw it out.  Identify what was working and keep doing more of it.  Identify new things to try, new paths to explore.  The goal for the efforts were clear, increase engagement.  The measures they used, while manually gathered, focused purely on this outcome.

In late 2008 McDonald’s decided it was time to step back, to focus on how to do a better job strategically.  While their efforts, and the regular debrief, led to solid execution, they recognized that social media needed a strategic role in the organization.   Heather formed a partnership with her counterpart in marketing and they began leading a cross-functional team focused on how to “do social right”.  As part of this initiative McDonald’s all local social media efforts were temporarily shut down, giving them time to understand how best to leverage social strategies and the social tools they use.  This was a brave move in my opinion, one I am not sure I would have taken.  However, I am impressed with their thinking at this point, time well spent.  As McDonald’s views the social world, here are the three stages towards social business enlightenment:

• Listening.  Tuning in, learning what people want, how the major channels work, etc..
• Participating.  Engaging with customers, blogger outreach efforts.  2 way engagement.  McDonald’s is in this phase now.
• Leading.  Becoming a recognized leader in the social business space, a company others want to emulate, defining a measurable ROI.

 In October of 2009 McDonald’s officially launched their Twitter and Facebook pages, entering the Participating stage of their social strategy plan. They have done a solid job on the Twitter front, promoting their people and actively engaging.

• The customer satisfaction team at McDonald’s now has two people using Twitter (via CoTweet) full-time and they are expecting to add more people as the year progresses.
• They have been actively listening with Radian6 and are adding Cymfony to their listening tool mix.  As they scale listening efforts to the Enterprise level  they will be rolling out more robust dashboards and metrics, enabling deeper learning at ever stage.
• While they are not yet feeding data from their social interactions back into a CRM system they are manually reporting, evaluating, and modifying their efforts as they go.  This is a great first step, CRM integration can come later in the year.

What are some of the challenges that McDonald’s, and you, will have?  How do you define a positive interaction?  Wow, tough question…. The answer will vary from company to company, from marketplace to marketplace, and yes, even time will change the answer to that question.  For McDonald’s, at this place and time, the answer focuses on deepening engagement with users.  If they can turn around a negative response to a positive then that is a positive engagement.  Sometimes the simple act of responding, listening to a users and responding to that user, is all that it takes.
 
So…. What’s next for McDonald’s?  Think local value.  From their Facebook page you will be able to enter your zip code and get great local information, local offers, local coupons.  Local stores, or regions, will be setting up their own Twitter accounts and Facebook pages.  Yes, they will all drive a single brand image.  However, they will do so with a distinctly  flair.

I’ll keep watching what they’re up to and keep you in the loop.  Oh, yes…. I will have fries with that Big Mac.

John