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 McDonald's non-response. Ben asks what McDonalds should do?
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.
What should they do? Engaging a blogger can easily backfire if the initial communication is forced or awkward. There have been plenty of instances of blogs stating, "Look at this lame e-mail I got from X." On the flip-side, the silence can be just as bad, if not worse.
Let's look at the famous 'Dell Hell' case from Jeff Jarvis. Dell did eventually respond to Jeff, but the out-reach by Dell didn't really save them any face. But what if Dell had said to Jeff, "you're right, we'll send you a brand new laptop and refund a portion of your original purchase price." How many bloggers would start posting, "Hey my Dell laptop sucks too!" Then what does Dell do? Only refund the most influential bloggers? Then you would have every personal blogger screaming favoritism.
Large corporations that have normally shielded themselves from customer interaction are stuck in a catch-22. Yes, it would be smart to engage the customers, but they need to avoid making a knee-jerk response and causing more trouble then they had before.
Update Ben has some more thoughts over at Church of the Customer
Visitor Comments
Actually, if you look at, I believe it was the recent BlogOn conference - McDonalds is really into blogging themselves. To hell with them anyway, but they are blogging.
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick | October 20, 2005 5:04 PM
The discussion at BlogOn was about their internal blogs.
Posted by: Josh Hallett | October 20, 2005 5:19 PM
Josh, I strongly agree with you. A measured glance at the role and position of ANY top executive group, including McDonald's, clearly indicates that their job is ridiculously tough. Regardless of their decision, next move, or agenda, someone stands ready to attack them. In many ways it seems that they can't win.
Obviously The McChronicles is built on a love of McDonald's. Our goal is to make the consumer's voice available - offer it up for evaluation. That's all.
Any corporate management's job should be to: 1) work for the shareholders, and 2) build the business, all while maintaining the proper ethics and legal requirements. One way to build the business is to continually adapt to suit the customers' needs and desires. Hopefully The McChronicles makes that duty a bit easier.
The McDonald's team is world-class SMART. Let's keep supporting them and let them do their thing.
GREAT posting Josh.
Posted by: McChronicles | October 20, 2005 5:46 PM
Josh,
I am one of the people who is trying to move blogging into the mainstream at McDonald's. I wanted to offer a personal perspective on contacting/engaging the folks at McChronicles. Have you considered that by engaging and trying to have influence over the posts and conversations that are being made on McChronicles, we could threaten the very credibility that is being created? The value of balanced perspective personal blogs is that they are not being made corporate mouthpieces of the very company they are blogging about. It is about their voice, their perspective ...not ours.
As a side note, I personally appreciate the balanced perspective that is consistently being offered by the folks at McChronicles. They give McDonald's credit where I believe credit is due and they take us to task when we don't provide a customer experience that is consistent with our brand values.
Steve Wilson
While I work for and am commenting about McDonald's, it should be pointed out that the viewpoints and comments presented here are my own and in no way reflect the positions or interests of McDonald’s Corporation, its partners, customers or clients.
Posted by: Steve Wilson | October 26, 2005 12:26 PM