‘I’M LOVING IT’: McDonald’s Social Media Prescence & Influence

retail management internal assessment by Pranavi Menon 

McDonald’s is no longer a fast-food restaurant chain (and retail brand) but an emotion; precisely why it was used as a pivotal location in Season 2 of Loki by Marvel Studios. McDonald’s has grown to become a brand home to memories, joy, and arguably one of the best French fries to ever exist – and its marketing game most definitely does not fail to remind us about the brand and its much-deserved fame.  

Through their use of smart marketing strategies – that heavily contributed to the success the business enjoys today – McDonald’s wanted to establish a strong brand identity and market presence from the beginning to support their growth. 

McDonald’s is one of the Fortune 500 companies that have integrated social media marketing into the core of their marketing mix and one of the few companies that are doing social media marketing the right way. They have over ninety-three million followers across five different social media platforms with location specific handles that provide an air of personal connection and care to reach to every individual interacting with the brand – thus allowing the social media handlers of McDonald’s build an engaged community over the years.  

McDonalds is known for its personalization through excellent social media mapping (graphical representation of where social media conversations and posts are happening using location-based social media apps), audience mapping (understanding preferred locations where your audience would want to hang out, using their jargon and talk about topics they’d be interested in) and tonality (the brand manages to create a separate and unique tone for each of its media platforms and locations). They create content that is location specific, audience oriented and true to their brand identity.  

McDonald’s digital media marketing strategy in India has been aptly classified into two regions to easily target and reach their audience in the best way possible. One may notice that on every site and platform, there are two McDonald’s accounts that exist: @mcdonalds_india for the West and South region and @mcdonaldsinindia for the North and East region. Each page is unique and different with their style of posting, their content, their bio, profile photo and banners. Their voice/tonality represents the region they target and highlights the company’s commitment to adaptability.  

Their accounts are regularly updated with posts/tweets and act as a great platform to connect with customers and build a loyal fanbase. They always make a post an occasion: from a festival, holiday, or the simple presence of a Monday. They also include current and seasonal content – for example, #RepeatYourLuckyOrder that became a popular marketing strategy during the World Cup and India’s streak of wins (we don’t talk about the finals); the Grimace Shake trend that became viral in June of 2023 in countries like the United States of America, etc. They take advantage of each platform’s unique characteristic and customise content across channels [eg: @mcdonaldscorp for an inside peak at what goes behind the food that we eat and the memories we create/have] 

Despite being a household name with not much need to invest in or create ads to sell/introduce their brand, McDonald’s never shies away from being out there and at-your-face with their advertisements and media marketing, making sure that you rarely forget they exist. If you look at the twitter and official Instagram page of McDonald’s (now stylized as WcDonald’s for the launch of their new sauce) you’ll notice the ‘unserious’ and gen-z targeted content that floods the pages and posts. 

The brand never fails to connect with its customers and bring out just the thing (concept/delicacy) that would draw and garner attention to them when this felt too dry. And this is not just a trick that’s been going on for this generation, you can notice it with the others as well: the Greatest Generation (Early McDonald's slogans and campaigns playing to the World War II veterans and their families who wanted a peaceful post-war existence), the Silent Generation (for the generation that grew up the same time as the brand, McDonald’s acted as "the closest thing to home."), the Baby Boomers (McDonald's drew them in with their "You Deserve a Break Today" campaigns from the 1960s to the 1980s), Generation X (grew up with McDonald’s as a spot for celebration like birthdays, parties, etc.), Millennials (McDonald’s experimented with a lot of marketing plans for them: the most popular one being with Mindy Kaling where they didn’t mention their brand name once).  

McDonald’s is also known for its ‘lore’: McDonaldland and all the character’s residing there which include Ronald McDonald (the brand mascot), the Hamburglar, Grimace, The Happy Meal gang, the McNugget buddies, amongst others. Each character had a storyline, a voice and reason for engagement – a popular example being Grimace. Last year celebrated the 52nd birthday of Grimace, with a meal that featured a purple drink that became the harbinger of chaos lugging good, bad and ugly publicity with its crude and gruesome humour (videos of people trying the drink and meeting creepy ends). Initially, the brand was unsure of how to answer to this trend that had taken over the internet, but soon joined in with Grimace ‘taking over’ their twitter/Instagram replying the trend in good humour.

The use of a humorous and relatable persona online plays to their strategy of using social media as a friendly way to interact with customers and potential brand advocates. But more than that, McDonald’s uses their social media to connect and communicate with their audience, quickly, directly, and clearly.

While the official account of McDonald’s may be doing a lot of things right on their level, there is still scope for relatability and a new original voice that can carry the social media of McDonald’s India. With more humorous content, playing to our country’s diverse meme generation/production (like seen with Zomato, FilterCopy and Subway Surfer’s to an extent), social media marketers can find new and unique ways to capture audience’s attention and increase interaction with their pages – targeting our generation along with the millennials (who are the unwitting genesis of all our memes).

But at the end of the day, McDonald’s relies on a simple tactic: tell your friends. Nothing can beat a loyal fanbase and their persuasion/influential skills [case in point: I complained about the random craving and urge of having a McFlurry and within the next two weeks, eight of my classmates had had a McFlurry like myself]. Like I’d mentioned, McDonald’s is a brand synonymous to emotions and whether you like it or not, someday you will end up saying: 

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