Transparency is always an important factor that any big company should consider especially when operating on open platforms such as social media.
Rather than shy away from awkward questions or bat them away with a generic corporate company response, companies should open up and take into account the community’s thoughts and expand on them.
McDonald’s Canada latest campaign is based around exactly this point. Aptly named ‘’Our Food. Your Questions’’,
McDonald’s invite their customers to ask any question they have about their food and services and then produce a video response as an answer. On top of bringing transparency, it’s also taking the opportunity to create responsive and relevant content.
Most questions are quite generic and as you would expect centered on food, nutrition and production (i.e. “Are your patties 100% beef? Are there bones in the chicken nuggets?).
One question which you wouldn’t expect of a large scale fast food chain to answer so openly and which in turn has become their most viewed video of the campaign with over 6 million views was the question “Why does your food look different in your advertising then in your stores?”. The video response that followed wasn’t exactly groundbreaking or investigative but gives an almost charming appraisal of the secretive world of food styling.
The way all the videos are shot and presented is so open that even the hardiest of critics would find it hard to pick fault. Some even feature the customer who posted the question through Twitter in the first place. But still they must fear some attacks as the comments have been disabled on the Youtube channel.
That begs the question if you put so much effort into being open and transparent, why do you still appear to be hiding something on the last hurdle? Previous Twitter fails in the form of #McDStories answer that one where a whole campaign was hijacked by angry customers and used to broadcast horror stories of bad service and inedible food.
Source: Huffington Post
On the whole McDonald’s Canada have been brave, savvy and managed to give an illusion of transparency and delivered a successful campaign. The reach and views speaks for itself.
For a company as large as McDonald’s rolling out this way of thinking and working is near on impossible but this is a great start which has earned them respect and intrigue in equal measure.
By Aaron C. @aaronchild