McDonald’s in the US have a blog dedicated to their CSR efforts and it’s a good start. It seems a little overly produced (very slick videos just look out of place on a blog) and there is some criticism of the amount of response people are getting in the comments, but I guess like Dell, they will fix that. It is brave though, because this is a firm that people (well, some people) love to hate and they have big issues like obesity and labeling and marketing to kids to address… and who can forget the beat-up job that was Supersize me?
But the reason I’m blogging about it is because on this post they actually show video of a slaughter house and cows being led in. That is very brave and very open and very honest when you think about their core constituency. I would have loved to have seen the look on the Happy Meal brand manager’s face when the CSR team put that idea up. Good enough for me to subscribe.
Technorati Tags: McDonald’s, CSR
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David,
I agree this was a brave move by McDonald’s but now they have to practice what they preach. They are getting beat up pretty badly on a lot of blogs over the Hummer issue and the blogosphere is not going to be incredibly patient and wait for Bob Langert to put together a measured response.
This is one of the reasons that I think it is tough for a senior executive to maintain a blog alone. I think that group blogs, with more than one person authorized to respond are a good idea.
Also, as several other blogs (Church of the Consumer, Enviroblog, Adfreak, just to name a few) have demonstrated and commenters have expressed, the conversations will not neccesarily occur only on your blog. Organizations and authors have to be prepared to get out there and engage in the conversation – not in all situations, but when it makes sense.
Lastly, if you have the guts to name your blog “Open for Discussion” you are going to be held to a higher standard.
(full disclosure: I am an Edelman employee)
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Good points. The reason I posted on it is that it is one thing for a tech company like Dell or Sun or Microsoft to run a blog or blogs . . . tech companies rarely get accused of killing our children. Most of their conversations are about the relative merits of technology solutions or service provision (ocassionally exploding batteries too I guess). McDonalds are in a far more emotive area. Arguably this is a reason they should be blogging and talking of course, but it is massively brave of them. I guess we’ll both watch with interest from here on in.
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