Featuring:
Sean deGroot, measurement and insights manager, McDonald’s
Paul Quigley, CEO, NewsWhip
With about 40,000 restaurants across the globe, McDonald’s is not only the largest restaurant chain in the world. It’s one of the most immediately recognized brands on the planet. As such, safeguarding its reputation is serious business.
Real-time communication is the only way to do so effectively – a fact underscored and elaborated upon during this recent NewsWhip-hosted webcast, How McDonald’s has created a culture of real-time communication.
Sean deGroot, measurement and insights manager for the iconic brand, begins by underscoring how his team uses real-time alerting to both inform people about the brand and protect it against inaccuracies.
“We are a global brand. The volume of coverage is just massive,” he explains. “We've built a very refined strategic vision that allows us to hone in on the outlets and sources that are really important to us – the ones we know land with our consumers and have the potential to generate mass awareness. That's not to say that we don't pay attention to secondary sources. It's good to have that awareness.”
That strategic topic/issue-based tracking approach has allowed deGroot’s team to “cast a net that's focused, but also general enough” to give his team a firm handle on where its consumers are digesting their news. This tack also helps them identify any potential brand crisis or trend they need to respond to, in addition to enabling them to confidently disregard issues that aren’t getting traction.
Critically, the approach allows the team to respond to matters that warrant attention in real time.
“Good real-time communications incorporate real-time information with an understanding of the world to make better decisions about things as they're happening,” adds NewsWhip CEO Paul Quigley. “It’s about being able to see the ball when it's in play.
“Speed is the name of the game,” concurs deGroot.
Global and local
Being tuned into global events is vital to any thoughtful comms strategies.
“In light of tragedies such as the recent earthquake in Turkey and Syria, the last thing people need to hear about is a limited-time offer,” notes deGroot. “We need to make sure we're coordinated with what's going on in the world so we don't come across as insensitive or unaware of events. That’s never a good situation for a brand.”
Keeping local news in the viewfinder is just as important to protecting the brand.
“It's key for us to be on top of national trends, as well as localized trends that may pop up to national news,” advises DeGroot. “Our global real-time alerting program is active Monday through Friday and automated on weekends. We have a similar program dialed down into our local media team, so any events happening on the local stage that we need to be aware of can be looped to our corporate teams.”
“You need to know when something is kicking off even if it doesn't mention your brand specifically,” counsels Quigley. “If it's adjacent, it can be quite important to have your net set up so that you can capture it as well. Being able to detect that local story can be very useful for getting out ahead of it.”
DeGroot’s team is also tuned into business-adjacent trends. He notes that social-media platforms are important vehicles to the brand’s marketing efforts. Understanding how those platforms are evolving is necessary so that comms can best leverage these tools going forward.
(l-r) deGroot and Quigley
Four teams in one
Analytics are at the core of every aspect of the McDonald’s communications function and measurement is integral to its overall operations. DeGroot explains that his team is divided into four distinct but connected work streams: reputation-management measurement, proactive measurement, performance measurement, and issues and trends.
Comms strategies are aligned with key corporate pillars and are measured against how well they achieve those objectives.
“That thoughtful strategy on the front end gives us the ability to measure how we're functioning, how we're succeeding or where we need to improve as a comms function,” says deGroot.
Reputation management, the highest priority, is aligned with the overall goal of elevating McDonald's status as a trusted and admired brand.
“We’re leaning into primary research to see how we stack up against a key set of QSR competitors,” shares deGroot. Rather than use secondary or social media, his team opted for primary research for its ability to ask very direct and poignant questions.
“We’re proud of the work we've done as a global comms function to elevate our standing among consumers,” he notes. “We are now included on Fortune’s Most Admired Companies list.” DeGroot’s goal is to elevate the brand into the top 30 or above.
Proactive measurement works with marketing to assess the effectiveness of campaigns and determine where “strategies met the mark and what we can learn and apply,” explains deGroot. Meanwhile, the issue-and-trends stream focuses on trend spotting, real-time alerting and response planning when needed.
“The Russia-Ukraine crisis was a watershed moment for a lot of brands,” deGroot says, “and we were very intimately involved in that process.”
The performance-measurement workstream pulls all threads together with quarterly, biannual and yearly reports.
“We go from the micro to the macro,” explains deGroot. “It’s a very dynamic team with tons of expertise and brainpower across all four work streams. We're helping reshape how we go about formulating strategy using data insights.”
Quigley adds that the combination of data analytics and human-powered prediction has the potential to further elevate comms performance and value.
When used together, he concludes, “the approach leads to better decisions and strategies.”
Click here to view this webcast on demand.
