McDonalds Hashtag Disaster

By James Ashworth

FAST food chain McDonalds have opened up their Twitter page to a torrent of abuse from unhappy customers, after using a vague new hashtag.

McDonalds has become embroiled in recent years with rumours of bad meat, unclean facilities, and several unwanted objects found in food. But now they have made everything even worse with a Twitter campaign that has backfired!

Everything started off well, when last week McDonalds posted a new hashtag, #meetthefarmers. The campaign was well received, but then McDonalds messed it up by changing their campaign, posting, “When u make something w/ pride, people can taste it," McD potato supplier #McDstories. This second hashtag was vague and many Twitter users took this as a chance to post negative stories about experiences at the fast food restaurants.

Stories tweeted included "Fingernail in my BigMac once #McDStories”, "Ordered a McDouble, something in the damn thing chipped my molar. #McDStories," and "Hospitalized for food poisoning after eating McDonalds in 1989. Never ate there again and became a Vegetarian. Should have sued #McDStories”.

“Within an hour, we saw that it wasn’t going as planned,” said McDonalds social media director Rick Wion. “It was negative enough that we set about a change of course.”

Now McDonalds have removed the #McDstories hashtag, but kept the #meetthefarmers hashtag, and added a new one called #littlethings. This third hashtag asks people what are the little things in life that make you happy? So far, few people have complained at the fast food chain through it, but nor have many people tweeted that McDonalds make them happy. But, as long as they don’t use another hashtag that can be used to criticise them, McDonalds should be alright.

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