Sunday, February 22, 2009

Real World: Lunch Break

After a full morning of information sessions, we got a lunch break and another chance to network. We got a table near the front of the room and were joined by several girls from the Georgia Aquarium (I swear everyone I meet that works there is so friendly and happy, it must be a fun place to work!).  

After lunch was served, Heather Oldani, the Director of U.S. Communications for McDonald's, spoke about how McDonald's has used social media.  Ms. Oldani opened the discussion by admitting that McDonald's is still learning how to utilize various social media tools, but went on to discuss various initiatives they have had success with.  One of the most interesting things to me was the effort they are making to monitor what people are saying about McDonald's online.  For example, did you know that on average someone writes about McDonald's (online) every 5 seconds?  I'll admit I didn't know much about McDonald's in general, let alone their social media use, so the panel was pretty interesting and informative.

2 comments:

  1. I know ATL McDs are on Twitter ... but what big social media projects do they have (other than monitoring)? Would love to hear more details about what McD's is doing!

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  2. Now I'm really wishing I had taken notes but it felt awkward to during the lunch session...

    The two big things I remember were they did a big campaign when they started their Southern Chicken Biscuits about introducing people to the concept of chicken for breakfast (http://www.whatcamefirst.com/danceoff/intro.php). Also, they did a contest on YouTube where users entered their own versions of the retro "Big Mac jingle" (this was before my time so I'm not really sure what it was like) for the Big Mac's 40th birthday.

    She also mentioned they have McDonald's fan pages on Facebook, and I know they've done work with mommy bloggers to try and inform people about the nutritional facts of McDonald's food.

    Does anyone remember what other initiatives they've done?

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