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McDonald’s Twitter McFail

McDonald’s has faced a barrage of angry Twitter users in response to its latest social media campaign.

One of two promoted tweets that invited diners to share their McDonalds stories under the hashtag, #McDStories, led to a hail of unpleasant stories about the fast food chain being shared across the micro-blogging site.

Examples of some of the stories include finger nails found in burgers, incidents of food poisoning, rat sightings and more general stories about how people feel sick after eating at the chain.

McDonald’s also got drawn into an exchange with animal rights activists PETA over the methods used to produce its chicken nuggets.

“With all social media campaigns, we include contingency plans should the conversation not go as planned,” says McDonalds’ social media director Rick Wion. 

The hashtag was promoted for less than two hours before being pulled.

However, the McDStories were not all negative.  One tweet shared a charity project to build housing for the families of hospitalised children, funded from the proceeds of the sale of McDonalds’ Happy Meals.

Wion states there were 72,788 mentions of McDonalds on Twitter overall, with the McDStories hashtag forming 2% of that number.

Its second promoted hashtag, #meetthefarmers, was deemed more successful and raised awareness of the fast food giant’s supply chain and those that work along it.

David Hing, London