McDonalds demonstrates how not to use Twitter

A hashtag coined by McDonalds to promote its brand went horribly wrong after people started using it to vitriolically vent their anger and frustration with the brand. The tag #McDStories was initially used by the company as part of its #MeetTheFarmers campaign, a feel good social media initiative designed to put human faces to the vendors it sources its produce from. [caption id=“attachment_194406” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“The #McDStories hashtag backfired spectacularly: AFP”]  [/caption] The #McDstories hashtag was only used twice by the official McDonalds Twitter handle, but users latched on to it and quickly began tweeting derogatory statements such as, “Watching a classmate projectile vomit his food all over the restaurant during a 6th grade trip. #McDStories” and “My brother finding a fake finger nail in his fries. #McDStories”. When the hashtag began trending it was primarily because of negative tweets like these, and the case has quickly become a case study for how not to use social media. Social media director Rick Wion told paidcontent.org: “Within an hour, we saw that it wasn’t going as planned. It was negative enough that we set about a change of course.’’ TheNextWeb said “There were many things wrong with #McDStories, but most of all the campaign was too vague and naïve.” Web Magazine Inc.com said the problem with the hashtag was that “It was ripe for exploitation, allowing naysayers in the Twitterverse to put their own often negative spin on a McDonald “story.” McDonalds tried to mitigate the extent of damage by immediately starting a #littlethings hashtag, but it did little to change the situation. It may well be that 2012 has already seen one of the biggest social media fails of the year.