Creating a more human brand image: McDonald’s social media strategy

This event report explains how McDonald's uses social media to improve its image. Part of McDonald's social media strategy is to accept that not everyone can be persuaded to like the brand and to ensure focus is on consumers that can be won.

Creating a more human brand image: McDonald's social media strategy

Stephen WhitesideWarc

McDonald's, the quick-service restaurant chain, is one of the few brands that truly polarises opinion. From discussions regarding obesity and using "pink slime" in hamburgers to debates on the minimum wage, its name is rarely far from the headlines, even though the evidence cited against the company is frequently inaccurate or entirely false.

"We kind of feel at times that we're a brand under siege," Heather Oldani, senior director, US communications, for McDonald's confessed to delegates at the Corporate Social Media Summit, held in New York in...

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