Over the last couple a decades fast food has been under a lot of attention from the side of environmentalists, dieting experts and nutritionists, health care professionals and a huge number of public activists bombarding the fast food companies with attacks, assumptions, tests, investigations and questions. McDonald’s is one of the brands with serious image issues and reputation problems based on the public unawareness about the procedures the business employs in order to process and prepare their food. In order to support their image and reputation the company has arranged a recent digital transparency campaign called “Our Food. Your Questions”.
The campaign was launched in October of 2014. The purpose of the campaign was to demonstrate that McDonald’s has no secrets from the customers. The digital campaign designed to answer the questions that have been bothering the consumers of fast food for a long time, provide transparency and get rid of the myths that make a negative impact on the company’s reputation. The consumers could ask McDonald’s all kinds of questions about their food and the processes involved into its preparation, preservation, and transportation.
Among the elements of “Our Food. Your Questions” digital campaign there were social media incorporating various groups of population as audience, the website created specifically for the campaign, and video investigations concerning the questions bothering the consumers posted on social media for the public access. During the campaign McDonald’s positioned itself as an honest and transparent business openly sharing all of its secrets with the consumers. This facilitated personal engagement for the customers and the feeling of being listened to as McDonald’s tried to respond to all of the most popular public concerns about its business and products.
“Our Food. Your Questions” incorporated several different social media. First of all, the company was promoted by means of YouTube video in which the customers were invited to ask McDonald’s questions about their food, for that they needed to submit the questions on the specially created campaign website. The consumers were to log in through their accounts on Facebook and Twitter. The answers to the questions were provided in dedicated YouTube videos featuring Grant Imahara, the ex-“mythbuster”, who followed each stage of the production of McDonald’s’ foods and asked direct questions submitted by the viewers.
The campaign launched in October of 2014 was the American version of prior McDonald’s campaigns with the same name and objectives that were conducted in Canada and Australia several years earlier. Each of the campaigns was extremely popular and gained millions of views on YouTube.
The videos provided within “Our Food. Your Questions” digital campaign were very informative and educational for the consumers. They unraveled some of the most popular mysteries concerning the food sold by McDonald’s and answered such questions as “why does McDonald’s food never rot?”, “How come the items in the photographs look so much different from the actual ones?”, “Does McDonald’s use real meat in burgers?”. The campaign managed to tackle many myths about McDonald’s products.
The campaign did not include many answers considering the use of hormones and GMO ingredients in the foods, or cruel farming practices. The rare references to these subjects were rather vague which created concern among the viewers.
In my opinion, making an effort towards the improvement of sustainability and replacing antibiotics and GMO ingredients and hormones in their meals would have been a more successful practice to improve the company’s reputation than openly showing the process of preparation of fast food at McDonald’s.