I know it has been a fortnight or more since I’ve posted, but I wanted to get back to the blog and talk about the multitude of activities going on at McDonald’s USA.
I am now 7 months in to my new role and feel I’ve gotten my sea legs on the massive and ever rolling ship that is McDonald’s. So what is going on?
TONS.
If you live under a rock, you might not know that the Mc Rib is back. Through a careful mix of pre-seeding and launch activities, we’ve been able to generate a HUGE amount of chatter about the national return of my personal favorite menu item…that is if you count Wall Street Journal, Colbert, John Stewart, USA Today, Google Trends, Yahoo Hot News and a few hundred millions other traditional and social media posts a big deal.
McRib turned in to a trending topic on Twitter (before our promoted trend) on Google and Yahoo (twice). Oh, and Bill Clinton also talked about how excited he was about it.
McRib was also our first test of promoted Tweets and Trends. Yes, there were some negative tweets, but there were nothing compared to the huge majority of fans showing uber excited about the return of McRib. Fortune had a great write up on this subject:
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/11/17/why-it-doesn’t-mcmatter-if-you-dont-like-the-mcrib/
Beyond McRib, we had a great pilot program with Farmville. Great meaning engagement of many millions more than expected.
Our Facebook places launch is raising $50,000 for charity and our virtual hands program is kicking in another $10,000.
Once things settle down, I hope to post more about each program.
Rick Wion