#McDonalds backhash - twitter marketing strategy goes wrong

When businesses are increasingly being told to harness the power of social media for brand marketing campaigns, it must have come as somewhat of a shock to McDonalds, one of the world’s super brands, that things do not always work out as planned.

Their recent Twitter campaign kicked off on Thursday with a series of paid-for Tweets. The first stage of the campaign, with the hashtag #MeetTheFarmers, went relatively well with a host of positive comments. The second stage, however, hit the fast lane of marketing failure with the hashtag #McDstories, “When u make something w/ pride, people can taste it”. Within minutes the hashtag took on a life of its own, hijacked by Twitter users launching a worldwide attack on the brand, regaling readers with horror stories, anti-cruelty messages and healthy eating protests.

As far as Twitter marketing failures go, this one closely rivals the Habitat hashtag abuse scandal. But as a brand that for decades has been the subject of controversy, whether deserved or not, it seems that opening up the brand brand to a forum where the world can say what they think about you may have been misjudged.

With Twitter now promoting its new branding pages, it is important that brands that use this medium plan their campaign carefully and, where possible pre-empt potential problems. Thankfully for McDonalds, as an already controversial brand, this failed campaign is unlikely to damage their brand significantly but other brands should consider the impact that a negative campaign could have on their own brand.