Reflection on Social Media Case 1: McDStories

McDStories Case Study


When I first started reading this case study I was intrigued because McDonalds is one of the largest businesses in the world that everyone seems to know. McDonalds think they have this brilliant idea of creating a hashtag so everyone can share how much they love the organization. However, it backfires on them. I learned a new phrase in this article “expert blind spot”. The people in charge at McDonalds have this expert blind spot which hinged them from seeing anything wrong with this idea of the hashtag. They thought it would only bring in good stories and free advertising. However, this was not the case. In an article from Forbes website titled McDStories: When A Hashtag Becomes A Bashtag (https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/01/24/mcdstories-when-a-hashtag-becomes-a-bashtag/#4fca22eced25)  you can see pretty clearly what path their hashtag took. One of the sample tweets from this article is “Dude, I used to work at McDonald’s. The #McDstories I could tell you would raise your hair”. As we can see from this tweet and many others the hashtag didn’t go the direction McDonalds was planning. Instead of getting free advertising and stories of praise they got jokes about their food and stories they wouldn’t want the public hearing. The concept that the executives had behind the stories was a good thought but like I mentioned earlier their expert blind spot affected them from seeing how the situation would play out not in their favor. In an article from the Business Insider titled McDonald’s Twitter Campaign Goes Horribly Wrong #McDStories (http://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-twitter-campaign-goes-horribly-wrong-mcdstories-2012-1)  it talks about how initially McDonald’s started off with the hashtag #MeetTheFarmers trying to draw costumers in to their fresh produce promise, which could have been a good advertising strategy. However, later that day they used the hashtag #McDStories to continue the hopes of free advertising and wanting to hear success stories from costumers. We know they that didn’t look at all the places that hashtag could go and it definitely went the places they did not want it to go. This advertising flop is a good example of what can happen if we fail to look at all ways something can be interrupted.

Comments

  1. DylanSpradlingJanuary 18, 2018 at 8:00 PM

    Good job Emma. You explained this content very well. I also like your links that you added in.

    ReplyDelete
  2. chad.artistJanuary 18, 2018 at 8:04 PM

    Great Job emma, I liked how you talked about how the blind spot effected McDonalds and the sources you used.

    ReplyDelete
  3. karleejoJanuary 18, 2018 at 9:01 PM

    I did not know what expert blind spot was either, but I don't think they'll have that same blind spot again after what happened. I liked how you said we need to look at all the ways something could be interrupted when using social media. Social media is such a great platform to share things, but probably one of the easiest platforms to go wrong. Great post!

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownJanuary 18, 2018 at 9:53 PM

    Nice insight into the case Emma! Your insights were well thought out.

    ReplyDelete

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