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“Little Things” That Made McDonald’s A McFail

January 26, 2012 - Category: Four Stages of Social Media

By Mikinzie Stuart, PepperDigital

Let me preface this blog post by saying that I like McDonald’s (especially their coffee) and have had positive experiences with the brand via social media. While I wouldn’t consider myself a mega fan, when a brand does right by me as a consumer, I like to do right by the brand.

That’s why when I read about McDonald’s #McFail, I found myself feeling disappointed.

My initial reaction was that it could have happened to any brand. Launching a marketing campaign on an open (and vocal) platform is always going to have the risk of attracting criticism and naysayers (or in marketing speak, “detractors”). Sure, they could have handled things better, but sometimes that’s just the way the french fry gets fried. People eventually move on and forget about it.

But when I read about their ”Hail Mary” attempt to put a bandage over the failed #McDstories hashtag campaign with a NEW hashtag campaign, #littlethings, I started to see things differently.

The problem with #littlethings, and even with #McDStories, is that McDonald’s didn’t consider the little things in the first place:

  • Hashtag-sharing is a no-no, no matter the brand or campaign. A blog post about Twitter chats lists some worst practices, including using a hashtag without researching if someone else is using it and hijacking a hashtag. Sound a “little” familiar? This makes it unfair to the other brand and confusing for audiences tuning in to the hashtag. Not to mention, it’s a lazy error that could have been avoided by doing a little research.
  • If you want to start a positive conversation, prompt positive engagement. What I mean by that is don’t soapbox, rather ask for positive brand engagement with limited room open for interpretation. While #littlethings was more on the mark, the sentiment had already been torched by the negativity surrounding #McDstories.
  • Realize you have zero control. As I mentioned earlier, once you put something out on the socnets, you can forget about “control” or “messaging.” That’s where McD’s went wrong. When it comes to social media marketing, nothing is 100% predictable, no matter how carefully you plan or word something. But if they wanted to have some resemblance of control, they should have hosted it on a more controlled platform, such as Facebook where you can outline page guidelines.

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Where My Smartphone Landed Me

January 24, 2012 - Category: Mobile Insights

By Eddie Russell, PepperDigital

There’s no denying – smartphones put an abundance of knowledge and entertainment at our fingertips. Like an eternal partner, we take it with us wherever we go, constantly interacting with it: checking email for work, entertaining us when we have downtime and even directing us across town to a restaurant it recommends (two-thirds of us even sleep right next to it in bed!). But in relying on this technology so often and for so many things, have we become the over-dependent spouse who can’t do anything without their better half?

A few years ago while in college, I headed to the airport to pick up a friend arriving on a late flight. Unfamiliar with the route, I jumped in the car and typed ‘airport’ in to my phone’s map app. I was exhausted from an exam I had that day so my mind quickly switched to autopilot mode, following the highlighted route without much thought. Long story short, despite a few red flags that I decidedly ignored, my phone ‘landed’ me on the runway instead of at arrivals where my friend was waiting.

Apart from suggesting airport security isn’t as secure as you might believe, this scenario illustrates how relying on your phone and technology doesn’t always produce the fastest, best or even right results – we must evaluate the information as well.

Take Google for instance. As a leader in the digital realm, Google relies on a series of algorithms based on the latest technology to produce its search results.  However, the company also employs a number of quality raters who manually sift through searches, evaluating for accuracy. Together, technology and human judgment work jointly in an effort to create the “perfect search engine” that “understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want.”

I could go on with stories about my phone and its/my shortcomings, but you get the picture. The next time you follow an app’s directions or take the advice of your friend, Siri, ask – you sure about that?

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Moving Mountains through Social Media (or at least Capitol Hill)

January 20, 2012 - Category: Four Stages of Social Media

By Lauren Begley, PepperDigital

The Internet has introduced a new frontier when it comes to intellectual property law. With the click of a mouse information and multimedia files are shared, altered and repurposed. Most of the time, the transfer of content is harmless; casual Web users in no way setting out to infringe on another’s original work. Though search engines, music streaming platforms and video sharing sites have made it easier for content to flow into more dangerous territory where copyrighted content becomes less protected.

This was the rationale behind the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) bill, which aims to crack down on the online sharing of copyrighted material.  A similar bill called that Protect IP Act (PIPA), was approved by the Senate in May. While these pieces of legislation were written with good intentions, the minutiae of the bills would make it much easier for the government to shut down sites that host allegedly pirated content, thus putting sites like Wikipedia at risk.

The result was a widespread protest led by internet-based companies large and small. Wikipedia shut down for 24 hours and posted a banner encouraging visitors to write their congressmen. More creatively, The Oatmeal (a favorite of mine!) shut down its site and reduced its homepage to a black background with an animated gif to demonstrate how the restrictions would reshape the blog if SOPA was enacted.

In one day, more than eight million Internet users took action against the bill resulting in Senator and PIPA co-sponsor, Marco Rubio, to reverse his position. The New York Times called the grassroots efforts a sign of the tech industry’s “coming of age.”

In a world that has been so changed by the advent of the digital age, it would be reckless to impose blanket legislation without thoughtful consideration of the implications on e-commerce, information sharing, intellectual property, and our first amendment rights. It is exciting to see how the Internet can empower individuals and serve as a tool for proactive change.

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