Why McDonald’s thinks it’s ready to push forward with social media in the UK
McDonald’s is ready to flex its social media muscles after 18 months getting up to speed, launching a Twitter-led campaign that also spans Instagram and Periscope to promote its biggest ever football campaign.
When it comes to spearheading social media marketing, McDonald’s hasn’t been the most progressive. It launched its first proper Twitter account for its UK business in 2013 and its investments on other channels locally have erred on the side of caution. However, this is about to change, McDonald’s head of marketing in the UK Steve Hill told The Drum.
“It’s taken us 18 months to really get our head around social media and to get to where we are today,” he added.
“We were probably apprehensive about social media initially and the role it can play for us. Historically, we’ve prioritised broadcast media approaches but with campaign activity like what we’re doing this summer we’re building around social first and foremost. It’s become at the forefront of what we do. We’ve invested heavily in both the infrastructure around people and the campaigns that we do when it comes to [the discipline] because it’s an opportunity for us to be contextually relevant in way we’ve never been before.”
The results of this shift are most apparent in the brand’s #CelebrateBetter nationwide campaign to move its football efforts from appealing to the professional side of the game to grassroots instead. It sees McDonald’s working with the UK’s four home nations football associations to back initiatives that over 13,500 young people kids football at a community level. It’s why there’s less of a focus on the likes of England stars Wayne Rooney and Raheem Sterling in the promotions to ensure there’s clarity around the message of enjoying the game.
Social’s role in the strategy is to tie together the experiential activity happening on pitches to a wider audience keeping up to date with football on their screens. Photography, video content and live streams from events across the summer will give Twitter and Instagram users access to a host of McDonald’s football ambassadors Casey Stoner from the England Women's team and Manchester United assistant coach Ryan Giggs. Those same fans are also encouraged to tweet, Instagram and Periscope the small but meaningful successes that happen at grassroots clubs, in parks and back gardens across the country.
It amounts to a carefully crafted, season-long awareness drive for McDonald’s bid to be seen as championing healthier lifestyles. Consequently, it will be employing relatively new techniques to evaluate how these themes are chiming with people's views of the brand in the social space.
“Our challenge is to ensure that we connect those different [social media] channels and don’t have just have specific campaigns on specific channels. We need to utilise each to their strengths but then making sure they’re connected in the right way,” said Hill.
“We’re looking at a range of metrics when it comes to evaluating our social media work because it’s not about likes. It’s about engagement and understanding the levels of responses that we’re getting. That’s becoming an increasingly important focus for us.”
The football campaign will also try to win over parents. McDonald’s is working with Mumsnet, BritMums and parenting bloggers to appeal to what it claimed are “social media-minded” parents to share their grassroots football experiences alongside their kids. It has also relaunched the Better Play site that will be promoted across phases of the campaign.
McDonald’s UK is in rude health compared to most other parts of the business, which are struggling to adapt to shifting consumption habits. As such, the restaurant has been looking at ways to translate some of the more effective parts of its local marketing to other regions in order to spread the success.