Now, that's an ugly thumbnail! Now that that is out of the way, let's start off with some good news. That's right, here is an example of a good Twitter campaign that was successful. We'll look at a bad one in just a moment.
The GOOD: McDonald's. The fast food giant put out a creative, and effective Twitter campaign during the Super Bowl in 2015. Using their "I'm lovin' it" slogan, they wanted to show their commitment to "lovin'" by spreading it to their consumers, other brands, and even competitors.
It takes a lot of creativity and great execution to rise above during the Super Bowl. Instead of reacting to events and hoping for a stand-out moment where it could steal the spotlight, McDonald’s reacted to something big that they could rely on: other brands’ commercials.
That's right, McDonald's used the power of other ads to fuel its own!
Here is what they did. They posted positive messages reacting to every ad and offered consumers the chance to win the product being advertised by simply retweeting their "lovin'" tweets. Basically, McDonald's saw an ad on the Super Bowl, Made a tweet about said ad, with the words "lovin'" in it somewhere, then asked them to ReTweet it for a chance to win said product.
Here is an example McDonald's Tweet from that night: "Lovin’ the love btwn father & son in @NissanUSA’s spot. RT to try & win a Nissan Altima you could drive someday soon https://cards.twitter.com/cards/16ac3u/bmvg …
The nature of the competition drove huge levels of engagement. Brands replied to McDonald's tweets, further increasing the reach of the campaign. They saw an increase in positive sentiment of 96%, gaining over 630,000 mentions. These staggering results had everyone talking, and brands were watching. It ended up making McDonald's earn the "Top Spot" for ads on Twitter that night. All of that positive feedback and ReTweets means that the fast food kings knew just what to do to show a little "lovin'" for everybody. Now, I suppose we should see what the bad boys are up to.....
The BAD: The comedian Jim Gaffigan said it best once. "It's all McDonald's." That's right, this campaign that failed is ALSO from McDonald's! Granted It's a combination of two Tweets in 2 different years, so 2 for the price of one!
So, in 2012, McDonald's wanted to start a Twitter campaign that would shine some light on the farmers that provide the food that they serve at their restaurants. They branded it "#McDstories" and it attempted to showcase the pride of their farmers that made their product, so that the consumers could appreciate the hard work they put into it. However, the hashtag would backfire on them like nothing else before. Consumers abused the hashtag to death and instead of it's proper use, users were posting all sorts of negative feedback for McDonald's, garnering them all sorts of negative attention. They tried to shut down the hashtag, but that's just not how Twitter works, so it eventually faded out in due time. And of course they would learn better how social media works, and got better at it in time for their good Tweets at Super Bowl 2015...but we talked about that already. Here is a more recent campaign that went bad, as they were trying to target Wendy's and failed.
In 2017, McDonald's Tweeted: "Today we've announced that by mid-2018, all Quarter Pounder burgers at the majority of our restaurants will be cooked with fresh beef." Yeah, that sounds good right, but they didn't word things right, as Wendy's came back and attacked them (Wendy's claiming ALL of their burgers were fresh beef) saying that McDonald's was only focussing on the Quarter Pounders only and not ALL of their burgers. McDonald's had to then reason with the public that the reason it was just Quarter Pounders is because they wanted to see if they could still cook and sell them without losing how fast they are at selling them. Regardless, The jab from Wendy's caused a small rift in sales declines at McDonald's.
Rather good, or bad Tweets, look at it this way. We all do something bad at one point in our lives, but a super company like McDonald's isn't going to be affected in a large enough scale to effect it that much. Everyone will still go there no matter what unless some horrific tragedy like a super massive food poisoning or something happens. Social media might not always be here, but McDonald's is here to stay.