Social Media
McDonald’s Mindshare Social Media Community
Global Web Communications
McDonald’s Corp.
Oak Brook, Illinois, U.S.
Need/Opportunity / McDonald’s strives to continually evolve its communication channels to keep
pace with the ever-changing technology landscape. Nearly half of McDonald’s restaurants are located
outside the U.S., and the company has inherently relied on face-to-face meetings to plan business strategies and deliver them to the field. Today, McDonald’s is faced with the same knowledge management
challenges as most large corporations—the need to locate expertise, improve collaboration among people
distributed across time zones and geographies, recruit and retain top employees, and capture knowledge
from retiring workers. Yet the current global financial environment, accentuated by increasing travel
costs, is challenging the GWC team to develop alternatives for McDonald’s traditional internal communication methods. To that end, the communication team chose to develop and deploy a secure and
easy-to-use internal online social media solution as part of their short- and long-term department goals.
McDonald’s CEO, Jim Skinner, emphasizes that the company’s success relies equally on three important components: the corporation, its franchisees and its suppliers. McDonald’s Mindshare is designed
to support all three of these entities. A number of research studies and corporate communication
trends show that social media tools are becoming a part of enterprise communication; one of the major
benefits is that they encourage natural collaboration and idea sharing. But to several segments of the
McDonald’s system, these tools were foreign and certainly not what they were accustomed to using.
Intended Audience(s) / McDonald’s Corporation encompasses over 31,000 restaurants located
in 116 countries, supported by the home office in Oak Brook, Illinois, and regional offices located in
strategic areas across the U.S. and around the globe. To create a manageable user community and work
within the project’s budget, the audience for the 2008 phase one of McDonald’s Mindshare was chosen to be U.S. corporate employees and restaurant franchisees (although a growing number of English
speaking international employees have joined the Mindshare community and are being supported).
McDonald’s employees and franchisees reflect and represent the diverse populations served in its restaurants. The employee and franchisee populations span all working age groups and demographics. Many
employees, based out of regional offices, are often on the road, visiting restaurants and supporting the
franchisees. Some members of the target audience were familiar with social media environments, while
others found it difficult to understand how a social media tool differed from e-mail or a typical web site.
This diversity within the McDonald’s culture created challenges to implementing a new online collaboration community. Employee surveys were deployed, and informal polls were taken to determine if the
Mindshare tool could gain traction within the corporation. It was encouraging to find that it would.
Goals and Objectives / The overall communication objective was to create a flexible and dynamic
internal communication environment that would not only facilitate collaboration, idea sharing and
help corporate teams remain agile and productive, but also promote networking and personal interac-
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tion between McDonald’s staff, franchisees and suppliers. The team understood the rewards that could
emanate from a collective intelligence community and used what author James Surowiecki described
as “the wisdom of crowds” as a model (2004). However, they also realized the challenges to be faced,
exemplified in one of Shel Holtz’s blogs, “…that organizations cannot embrace social media for one
reason or another is the equivalent of looking for the quarter where the light’s better.” As a result, they
established the following goals and objectives for McDonald’s Mindshare Social Media Community.
Goals
4 Improve communication and facilitate collaboration among individuals and groups
within the McDonald’s system. The system is engaged, aligned, and motivated to share ideas
and best practices for continuous improvement and innovation. It enables users to communicate and collaborate efficiently with more people than is possible by phone or e-mail—in
some cases with people in other areas of the organization who they may not even know.
4 Capture process improvements and best practices more visibly. Turn implicit knowledge
into explicit knowledge. Improve access to information and other company assets like photography, videos, and documents to leverage successes and save time. Support improved and better
informed decision making as a result of diverse input, perspectives and shared knowledge.
4 Build and enhance relationships. Connect people with others in different areas of the company regardless of geography or time zone. Drive knowledge sharing across geographies at all
levels of the system to create a competitive advantage.
4 Enhance knowledge management and create a corporate memory. Capture and retain
knowledge in a central location that would otherwise be lost as employees transfer to different
departments, leave the company or retire.
The GWC team accepted the fact that some of these goals could only be achieved over the long term.
Strategic to the long-term acceptance and adoption of Mindshare throughout McDonald’s global system, four key objectives were established for deploying the solution during the first year (2008).
Key objectives established for the first year of Mindshare deployment
4 Objective No. 1: Establish U.S. employee understanding and acceptance of the Mindshare
Social Media Community.
4 Objective No. 2: Achieve steady growth in membership and productive participation in the
community.
4 Objective No. 3: Obtain continued project funding through the sale of individual Mindshare
neighborhoods to departments, teams and communities of practice in the McDonald’s system.
4 Objective No. 4: Promote individual successes gained through the adoption of Mindshare, setting the stage for further deployment of Mindshare to other areas of the McDonald’s system.
Solution Overview / The image GWC wanted to create was that of a global McDonald’s commu-
nity made up of local neighborhoods (categories of interest) with unique topics and subtopics within
them. The concept of neighborhoods evolved from focus groups conducted during the design phase of
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the project in late 2007 and early 2008. Additional neighborhoods would be owned and managed by
different business departments, teams or communities of practice within the company who felt they
would benefit from using them. New neighborhoods cost US$10,000 per year. The purchase of new
neighborhoods allowed the total cost of the community to be shared across multiple departments and
supported Mindshare’s continuing growth. Without this creative budget strategy, GWC would not
have been able to fund the project alone.
Another decision drawn from the focus groups was to avoid calling this a blogging community. Blogs
were found to be confusing to the test groups. More than housing personal chronicles, Mindshare was
designed to enable collaboration and discussion. The team chose to limit the contributors’ choices to
starting discussions (virtual conversations that can be commented on and replied to) and wikis (editable documents that also can be commented on.) With the tool, users are able to create rich personal
profiles; start discussions; ask or answer questions; collaborate in wikis; and share attached documents,
photographs, videos and presentations—all of which were easy concepts to explain and understand.
The Mindshare community was rolled out with four neighborhoods: corporate communications, McDonald’s values, restaurant capabilities and open minds (a neighborhood open to any topic or subject
matter.) The US$40,000 cost for the rollout was funded by the parent department, corporate relations.
To grow the Mindshare community, the GWC team had to find ways to create interest and participation
in Mindshare. They then needed to convince appropriate areas of the business to purchase neighborhoods
and work closely with them to develop sound business strategies for achieving success with the tool.
Key Initiatives
4 Identify and partner with champions (key people) throughout the company to coach them on
how to introduce and use the Mindshare social media tool for the benefit of their departments,
teams or groups.
4 Promote and demonstrate the value of collaboration by promoting “big wins” when they were
achieved by individuals and teams using Mindshare to facilitate collaboration and networking goals.
4 Increase user membership, member participation and the number of quality contributions to
the Mindshare community to create a “critical mass” of content.
New Tactics and Communication Vehicles
To accomplish these initiatives, the GWC team designed a multifaceted campaign to introduce and
promote Mindshare to the company. To make efficient use of the budget and staff resources, the team
developed a promotional campaign that utilized the team’s talents and existing communication tools,
including live presentations, print pieces, e-mail, intranet links, webinars and face-to-face meetings
with company leaders and department heads. Highlights of the 2008 campaign were as follows:
4 McDonald’s worldwide convention registration site contained a link to join the McDonald’s
Mindshare Community.
4 “I Mindshare, Do You?” road show: a series of “quick hit” promotions planned to engage
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people who had never heard of the Mindshare community and to spur interest in attending
the upcoming Mindshare cafés. The GWC team set up posters in the lobbies of McDonald’s
main campus buildings and handed out two-sided printed postcards that briefly described
Mindshare and how to become a member. The team answered questions, demonstrated the
site on their laptops and handed out invitations to upcoming Mindshare cafés.
4 Mindshare cafés: Four 90-minute semi-scripted presentations to large audiences at different corporate office locations delivered on separate dates. The Cafés were promoted by the
preceding road shows through e-mail notification blasts and with printed invitations hand delivered to key managers, team leaders and business associates (a simple form of viral marketing). At the cafés, the GWC team introduced the concept of “social media” and demonstrated
Mindshare. They created a PowerPoint presentation and left plenty of time on the agenda
for audience questions and discussion. Interested members of the audience were signed up
as members and given instructions on how to get started. The team brought a digital camera
and took pictures of new members for their personal profiles. When the budget allowed, they
provided snacks and small prizes as audience incentives. Attendance was taken, and a followup e-mail with a link to a Mindshare café discussion was sent to the attendees. To reach
remote workers and those who work in distant office locations, a web conference version of
the Mindshare café was created.
4 Team/department strategy meetings: During the cafés, and at any other opportunity that
presented itself, the members of the GWC team offered to meet with individual teams and
departments to strategize on how Mindshare could best be used to achieve their goals and objectives. These department meetings were often the impetus that encouraged the development
and purchase of new neighborhoods. GWC kept track of the many meetings and events they
participated in with a calendar on the team web site.
4 Best of Mindshare eNewsletter: e-mailed to all Mindshare members twice a month. Best of
Mindshare provides hotlinks and brief descriptions of successful wikis and discussions that
have helped teams achieve their business goals, or helped others to do so. The eNewsletter rewards contributing members by recognizing their efforts, and provides good examples of how
the community can be used to provide or support business solutions.
4 Integration into the portal: The front page of McDonald’s intranet portal, AccessMCD,
includes feature stories of interest to company staff. Now, many of these feature stories include
links to Mindshare discussions where readers can voice their opinions, add input or ask questions.
Implementation and Challenges / Global Web Communications has a professional staff of
nine, including the department’s lead, one administrative assistant and a part-time web designer.
GWC helps all areas of the business deliver high-level performance to customers, fellow employees
and shareholders. They do this by providing web communications counsel and expertise that aligns
with the company’s strategic plan. Their counsel is based on research, and they offer the most effective communication tools and vehicles available to help build a synergistic workforce that is informed,
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aligned and actively working toward company goals and values.
The Mindshare community was built on an outside vendor’s social media application and hosting platform. GWC designed the look and feel of the site to best support McDonald’s business culture. Based
on results from focus groups and beta testing with the Mindshare’s early adopters, it was determined
that developing a community comprised of neighborhoods (categories of interest) would address two
main challenges: 1) making the tool easy to use by intuitively organizing content in an orderly fashion that would support teams and their project initiatives and 2) creating a way to obtain the funds
required to grow the community through the sale of new neighborhoods to corporate departments,
teams and communities of practice.
The initial budget of US$40,000 allowed the team to build the startup Mindshare Community with
four neighborhoods. The administration and management of these neighborhoods is provided by
GWC staff. When a new neighborhood is built, the owners are required to manage it themselves by
appointing a “mayor” (administrator) to govern its members and moderate the content. Although the
Mindshare administration tool is easy to use, the GWC staff provides training and support to all new
neighborhood mayors and their assistants.
By using existing GWC staff, the marketing, training and support labor costs were absorbed by department payroll. E-mail, intranet and meeting rooms were also covered in the department’s operating
budget. Other costs, such as the printing and distribution of the Mindshare informational postcards,
snacks and prizes provided at the Mindshare cafés, stayed within the US$5,000 marketing budget.
Because innovation is a business imperative for McDonald’s, the team faced only a few challenges in
the creation and execution of the Mindshare program. One of these was combating the timidity of
some employees toward this new method of communication. The team now realizes there will be different rates of acceptance and adoption among different individuals. Another challenge was overcoming the argument concerning the time required to learn and use this new communication tool and the
plus/delta between it and other forms of electronic communications, like e-mail.
In the absence of cost-restrictive, deep, empirical data capture, the team currently uses membership
and content statistics obtained from Mindshare’s administration tool and page view statistics from
Google Analytics as ways to demonstrate continuing growth and popularity of the tool. A challenge
they plan to address in 2009 is developing a method for empirically evaluating the impact Mindshare
has on the company’s and individual employee’s goals and objectives. They also plan to host a series of
Mindshare Mayors’ Summits to gather practical feedback and verify the results to date.
MEASUREMENT/EVALUATION / Objective No. 1: Establish employee understanding and acceptance
of the Mindshare social media community. An initial success was achieved by the enormous turnouts
at the three road shows and four café’s the GWC team hosted. During the road shows and cafés, over
500 Mindshare informational postcards were handed out. Each of the cafés, held in the largest meeting rooms in the home office complex, were standing room only. The enthusiastic participation dur-
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ing question and answer sessions often led to post-meeting conversations. Most important, the GWC
team received 17 invitations to speak to individual departments, teams and employee network groups
about how they might use Mindshare to help achieve their goals and objectives. The team tracked
these meetings in an online Mindshare engagement calendar and a follow-up spreadsheet, which
tracked the key contacts for the groups they met with and the results of the meetings. New topic areas
were set up in appropriate Mindshare neighborhoods for interested teams and departments to work in
and, gradually, usage began to increase.
Objective No. 2: Achieve steady growth in membership and participation. On 10 December 2007,
the Mindshare social media community was rolled out with four neighborhoods and 44 members. At
this time, online registration was opening for McDonald’s worldwide convention—a companywide
event that takes place once every two years. During the online registration process, the conventioneers
were given the opportunity to join Mindshare and use the tool to find and communicate with other
conventioneers and McDonald’s leadership and staff who’d be attending the event. This opportune
and innovative membership drive delivered thousands of new members and, combined with other
membership initiatives, brought Mindshare to a total of 3,200 members by mid-May.
Mid-year, a series of user forums were conducted with active Mindshare contributors to discover why
and how they were using the tool. The GWC team also spoke with analysts from Forrester Research
to discover how other companies’ social media initiatives were stimulating participation. They quickly
realized that a successful social media initiative required adjusting to a new way of working and that
many members would benefit from examples of how others were successfully using the tool. The team
decided to promote the “big wins” that Mindshare’s early adopters were realizing and work directly
with individual departments to help them find their own goal-supporting uses for the tool. Another
way they chose to promote “big wins” was through a bimonthly Best of Mindshare eNewsletter which
was e-mailed to all Mindshare members. Best of Mindshare provided good examples of content and
promoted successes achieved by individuals and teams using Mindshare. It also recognized the authors
and contributors of valued content as company “thought leaders.” By December 2008, membership
had increased to over 4,100, and more important, content contributions increased from approximately 1 percent to over 4 percent of membership.
Objective No. 3: Obtain continued project funding through the sale of individual Mindshare neighborhoods to departments, teams and communities of practice in the McDonald’s system. Achieving
footholds with objectives one and two resulted in an impressive number of departments and teams
recognizing the benefits of owning and managing their own Mindshare neighborhoods. By December
2008, Mindshare had doubled in size to eight neighborhoods with new ones funded by global training, learning and development, the marketing department, menu management and the McDonald’s
Asia/Pacific (APMEA) region.
The GWC team continues to meet with new department heads each week to strategize on how Mindshare can be used to facilitate the achievement of their team goals. As of January 2009, three more
neighborhoods were scheduled to be deployed, purchased by the human resources department, restau-
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rant solutions group and McDonald’s diversity team. Membership and content contributions continue
to grow, giving the team hope that they are on the right path to a successful systemwide deployment.
Objective No. 4: Promote individual successes gained through the adoption of Mindshare, setting
the stage for further deployment of Mindshare to other areas of the McDonald’s system. The GWC
team was able to gather a good number of success stories during 2008. Unfortunately, the year ended
before the GWC team could reach out to business units in other areas of the world with this information. The team’s plan to market the benefits of the tool, by developing a series of web conference presentations similar to the Mindshare cafés to McDonald’s international regions, departments and teams
won’t be realized until 2009. They are looking to connect with and train a few global champions who
will carry the Mindshare message to the rest of the McDonald’s system.
Thus, the GWC team achieved straightforward success with three out of four of its 2008 objectives,
and efforts toward the fourth objective are being planned for 2009 delivery. Overall, the McDonald’s
Mindshare Social Media Community project initiative proved successful, resulting in a significant
increase in employee understanding of and departmental support for the tool. The team will continue
to build on their progress and enhance the Mindshare strategy over the next several years.
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