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McDonald’s Connects with Employees and Customers

January 27, 2009 By 19 Comments

At AMA’s MPlanet conference today, I had the opportunity to be part of a special Blogger Q&A session with Mary Dillon, Executive VP and Global Chief Marketing Officer for McDonald’s. She talked about a strong focus on employees, reaching out to moms, and social media.

Connecting with Employees

Mary started the session by sharing about the strong social networks that have been built by and around McDonald’s employees, or crews. “We have over 1.6 million employees around the world, and we try to inspire the crew to feel great, deliver on the brand promise, as well as reduce turnover.” There are several internal social networks which not only engage crews but also give them the opportunity to become more educated (with some even getting credit for it!). Some of these crew communities include MeTime in Australia and New Zealand, OurLounge in the UK, Latin America’s McLand (hope you speak Portuguese!), Singapore’s Ketchup!, and USA/Canada’s StationM. On this last one, Canadian Amanda Wilson was recently voted, by fellow employees, to be the resident blogger and moderator for this community.  Per Mary, these internal-only communities really help crews with engaging, bonding, and living the brand.

“Each employee could be the one experience someone has with our brand. This is a great way tap in and get people on the same page, share experiences.”

Customers Rock! take: I agree with Mary about the impact each employee interaction has with the brand. This could be a returning customer, or it could be someone new to us. Either way, each brand interaction adds up to an overall brand experience, and in this economy, it is important to make sure those experiences leave a positive impression.

Connecting with Customers

Back in 2005, McDonald’s started a Moms advisory panel – Moms’ Quality Correspondents. Per Mary, McDonalds wanted to learn more about this group of customers and be more closely connected to what they are feeling, needs, brand perceptions, and how they would like to evolve it. It is a live (ie. not online) group with participants from multiple countries, including athletes such as Bonnie Blair, a mom in Latin America who is a chef, another mom in the USA who is a PTA president. The McDonald’s team meets with them once per quarter to find out how to improve. There are now panels country by country.  When asked whether this would move online, Mary responded that enjoy the face to face experience with these moms, and the amount of online activity varies country to country. In the US, it is primarily online.  One of the moms also had her own community where she shared her McDonald’s experiences. Recently, she took a trip to a McDonald’s supplier (they send these moms on field trips!) and blogged about it. Usually, these ladies authentically share what is surprising to them!

When asked about how they recruit the moms, Mary shared a few criteria (one was NOT that they eat at McDonald’s). They tend to look for a woman who is a community leader, an influencer, and someone who will bring in strong perspectives (and share them out, too).

Customers Rock! take: Spending time listening to your customers is a critical part of forming a great customer experience. How do customers perceive your brand? What do they tell their friends (and others)? At a minimum, give customers a place to provide you feedback (online, if your customers are online a lot). If you can meet live with customers to hear this feedback, all the better.

Social Media

McDonald’s sees social media as a great opportunity to gather consumer information on attitude and perceptions about the brand. Per Mary, “This is a big opportunity for us; we haven’t tapped into it much yet, but we will!” She also stated that they are willing to look beyond merely the cost of doing social media marketing, as they recognize that this is a different kind of conversation. I couldn’t have said that better myself!

Customers Rock! take: McDonald’s will be a company to watch in these upcoming months. They have a great focus on taking care of employees and getting them engaged with the brand. This will continue to bring them benefits as they move towards engaging their customers online through their website, through communities, and through the social web. Based on the interactions I could see at the Moms’ Quality Correspondents site, there are a lot of consumers that want to more closely engage with McDonald’s and their offerings (how can I be one of your moms?). Now is the time to cement relationships with brand loyalists, turn them into brand ambassadors, and really harness the powerful social networks that many consumers already have in place.

Thank you so much, Mary, for sharing your time with us. You rock!

Filed Under: Blogging, Community, Customer experience, Interviews, Marketing Blogs, social media Tagged With: , , ,

What Does Brand Look Like in a Digital World?

January 8, 2009 By 18 Comments

The folks over at MPlanet have been reaching out to bloggers this week, asking us to post on one of the following four topics:

- Brand building in a digital world (my topic!)

- Connecting with empowered consumers

- Marketing mix in a fragmented world

- Global marketing on a borderless planet

Here’s my take on brands in this digital world we are working with.

Brand Ownership

There has been quite a bit of discussion of late about social media and brands. Who “owns” the brand in a digital world?  This reminds me of conversations about CRM and “managing” customer relationships. Can we really manage our customers’ relationships with us? Who is in control of the relationship? The customer. Likewise, as much as a brand may cater to their customers, it is ultimately the customer who is in charge of whether they purchase again (and whether they recommend you).

So, what does a brand look like in a digital world?  Whatever its customers say it looks like.

Online brand “impressions” come not only from interactions with a company’s official website, they come from every part of the customer experience.  Customer service, search results (yes, they are part of the customer experience), banner ads, and, of course, reviews, ratings, and blog posts about the company’s products or services all influence perception of the brand. There is general agreement that the brand is a summation of all these small touchpoints of a customer with a company.

Customers may agree or disagree with the branding that a company is doing, but in a digital world, they now have a very fast and easy way to share their thoughts. Thousands or millions of others can see, hear, and experience multiple customer perceptions of most brands, regardless of whether that brand has a strong online presence. In the digital world, other customers may be a stronger influence on the company’s brand than the company itself.

The community defines the brand in a digital world.

More Than a Conversation

Earlier this week I spoke with Jonathan Baskin, author of the book Branding Only Works on Cattle (podcast of the discussion coming soon!). We talked about the opportunities for a different take on branding. What should really be the goal? Jonathan suggested we create more than a two-way online conversation with customers; we need to drive them to action. Talking is great; buying is even better!  Jonathan posed the idea of doing this by creating a branding game plan where the brand comes alive through all the customer touchpoints (such as customer service). And he means games here, using games as models for how to do business with customers. This helps create experiences where customers are moved towards action (purchase, repurchase, or recommendation to others are good ones to start with!) in a way that they not only enjoy but where they can also feed back into the process.

Playing in a Digital World

Brands in a digital world have a lot of opportunities to take advantage of this type of game play. I don’t mean that brands should create online games for customers to play! I mean there is a challenge to make each customer interaction unique, exciting, and relevant to that customer at that moment in time. What your brand is to me is likely very different than what it is to my colleague, sister, or friend. Additionally, my perception of your brand may change depending on what I am intent on doing at the moment or even where I am in my customer lifecycle. Digital media allows companies to be extremely flexible in how they create customer experiences that are differentiated based on customer need (and value). And it also allows brands to make these experiences fun and engaging!

It All Adds Up

As Jonathan’s book states, “Branding is experience in time, and the brand becomes a series of interrelated behaviors.” Brands that will be successful in a Digital World are those that can not only tailor those experiences to their customers as needed, they are able to interact with and engage with customers online in a meaningful way – both for the company as well as for the customer.

(Photo credit: Will Lion http://www.flickr.com/photos/will-lion/2782049563/)

Filed Under: B2B Marketing, Community, Customer experience, Customer loyalty, Marketing Blogs, social media Tagged With: , ,