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October 19, 2005
The McChronicles of McDonald's
Whether it's ready or not, McDonald's is being pulled into the world of citizen marketing.
The McChronicles is one anonymous man's project to document the ups and downs of being the customer of a company he certainly is passionate about.
McC -- what else are we to call him? -- says he is an evangelist for the world's largest fast-food company. McC began his blog in January after attending a blogging workshop; since then, he has diligently documented customer service, food, store cleanliness and the wear-and-tear of many different store locations. (What makes McC a citizen marketer is that he regularly produces content about the company.)
One delicious anecdote finds McC visiting a store in Little Falls, NY, but is "stunned to see upon entering the store a McDonald's employee (apparently a manager, based on dress) eating a full Subway meal." Sounds like a quick-cut scene from "The Office."
McC also ventures into the dark abyss of analyzing company advertising. His consistent theme: The store experience is the marketing. Expensive ad campaigns are superfluous if the universal experience doesn't match the mainstream media message. It would appear from McC's blog that the chasm between the two worlds is, too often, quite wide.
Apparently, McDonald's HQ and its ad agency pay attention to the McChronicles; McC shares server log data with his readers and shows how company officials visit every day. Good thing they do: the blog is highly qualified secret shopper research with the added benefit of photos and videos.
But no one from the company has contacted him. Is that a good thing? Depends on your viewpoint. It means the corporate lawyers haven't fired up their stereotypical trademark infringement claims. It also means the company hasn't actively engaged McC.
For that matter, McDonald's doesn't really engage its billions of customers beyond the typical store experience. Certainly, the company assembles focus groups to test new products and ad campaigns, and probably employs numerous secret shopper companies.
But just think if the company were to create a community.mcdonalds.com website where the McC's of the world could, after undergoing a training program, become volunteer secret shoppers. A few years ago, the publishing concern O'Reilly had hundreds of people fulfill its request to voluntarily check inventory levels of bookstores around the country. O'Reilly is a fraction of the size of McDonald's.
Just think how a worldwide community could become the de facto test market for products or marketing campaigns by city, region, country, demographic or psychographic. Just think how word of mouth could ricochet around the world from that community and the 100 languages the company represents in its global reach.
Just think if the company were to create the equivalent of a Starbucks card. With 31,000 stores, the data mining opportunities would be unprecedented.
All of those customer engagement efforts represent the new world of customer loyalty, increased comps and fatter bottom lines. They have nothing to do with yet another Monopoly promotion or a new jingle.
Which leads to motives. Some skeptics inside big companies question the intentions of citizen marketers like McC. "What do they want? What's their agenda?" As if it were a guerrilla organization fomenting a revolution. That attitude misses the larger point of customer evangelism, which is built upon the foundation of a relationship, however opaque it seems outside the firewalls that separate workers from customers physically and emotionally. The irony is that revolution is really what they want. It's a polite request, though, loosely organized by highly intelligent, influential customers who want a piece of the action: a sense of ownership. They want to believe.
In an email to me, McC writes: "Today the question becomes, "Where is the reality?" Is McDonald's everything they told us it was? Everything we believed it was when we were so young? Or is it just a bunch of toxic junk food and a horde of thieving executives in an ivory tower?
"If those of us who believe in McDonald's offer an honest, appreciative,and constructive dialog, perhaps McDonald's leadership will gain the courage to do what's right and build the reality up to the brand. I want us, the consumer, to lead by example."
Other blogs that reference The McChronicles of McDonald's:
» What Should Companies Do? from hyku | blog - Josh Hallett
The following is cross-posted to Marcom Blog Over at Church of the Customer Ben McConnell talks about a passionate McDonald's blogger, McChronicles. You can read Ben's post to get all the details, but what I want to focus on is... [Read More]
» McPost about McDonald's from New Persuasion
If you saw my post about Burger King, you'd know I'm a fast food lover. When I was a kid, I could not believe that adults would not choose to go to McDonald's everyday - and I made a vow [Read More]
Very interesting - and you are quite right - McDonalds should have courage and start a dialogue with the community.
On the other hand - they are on their way - if this article about McDonalds internal blogging kick-of and their experiments is to be believed:
http://www.clickz.com/news/print.php/3556966
What I really found interesting in that story was that they are afraid of having an open session with their employes!!! And they find great relief when they discover, that they can in fact answer the questions that are asked.
If you are afraid of the open conversation you need to remember the words of Rudolph Guiliano on 9/11 "Courage is not the lack of fear" - it is to face fear and find solutions - even when you are afraid of changes. I think they should embrace that at McDonalds!
My company (400 people) has a quarterly session called "AnwserMan". Our president collects submitted questions and answers them live in front of everyone. Then, he opens the floor to any and all questions. We can submit questions in writing, anonymously, in person, etc. - all options.
Sometimes he tells us things we don't want to hear. Sometimes we tell and ask him things he doesn't prefer to hear. He hears it all, he answers it all, and we respect that. And he respects us.
Interestingly, he gets extremely little "weird" or ugly submissions (he shares them all). And you can feel the audience get disturbed when a weird question is asked (as if we are all getting asked this question). It certainly is OUR company - we feel in it all together.
He also tells us, "I don't know" when he doesn't know. I will grant you that he doesn't have a flock of vultures circling overhead, AND a pack of hyenas nipping at his heels like the leaders of McDonald's do. Their position must be incredibly tough.
McDonald's, please don't be afraid of your own people. Who else have you got????
That's cool. Let's hope McD's doesn't pull a Fedex on this guy.
The fear of the customer evangelist is not much different from people we have talked to that fear their own employees becoming more outspoken advocates of the organization.
Trine-Maria -- The McDonald's internal blog program you mention is a good start. Jackie was at BlogOn and heard Steve Wilson talk about his challenges to educating a big company like McDonald's about blogging tools and their potential.
We create the tools, and then the tools shape us.
