Valentina Madinabeitia
Dr. Ted Gournelos
COM 100
5/5/14
McDonalds’ Pink Slime Crisis: A Failed Campaign
“On my honor, I have not given, nor received, nor witnessed any unauthorized
assistance on this work.”
Valentina Madinabeitia
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Abstract: Well known brands often suffer from public relations crisis that reinforce
negative values that already characterize them. Recovering from this types of crisis is
very difficult for organization since the public seems to have a perceived understanding
of their identity. This paper analyzes McDonalds approach to the pink slime crisis by
using social-media, videos, and adding a new healthy section in their webpage to fight
the intensified unhealthy identity.
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Do you know what pink slime is? Do you know that almost every American has eaten
pink slime in their life? Do you know 70% of the beef sold in the supermarket contains
pink slime? Do you know many of the restaurants you love used to serve pink slime in
their meals? Pink Slime “is made from meat scraps that are heated to remove fat and
treated with food grade ammonium hydroxide to kill bacteria” (Schultz 2012, 1).
Ammonium is a household cleaner that is not fit for human consumption, which can leads
to many health risks because it could allow pathogens into the food that increase the
chances of serious illnesses like cancer.
Many Americans were not aware of this fact until 2011 when Jamie Oliver presented this
controversial issue in one of his TV show episodes. Many customers of huge food chains
like McDonalds felt disgusted and cheated because they had eaten and provided their
families with these meals without knowing what the beef contained.
News like this directly affected McDonalds, making them loose a huge portion of their
clients because of their lack of trust in the restaurant, so they had to come up with a
clever strategy to recover from the crisis they were in. Their strategy consisted of a
complete re-brand of the company using social-media (Facebook, Twitter and YouTube)
and adding nutritional sections to their webpage.
I argue that McDonalds can’t change the public’s understanding of the brand since it the
restaurant has become part of the American culture over the years. Their values and their
image is already established and changing how people see it is, in my opinion, mission
impossible from a public relations perspective. People have perceived understandings of
the image of a well-known brand like McDonalds. Therefore, people won’t stop thinking
of McDonalds as an unhealthy fast food restaurant because it has always been part of
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their brand and this crisis just re-enforced the identity.
Background
McDonalds is a well-known brand that is recognized all over the world for serving fast
food meals. This restaurant first opened in 1940 in California, which gives the
organization a long history of relating to their customers. Americans have been
familiarized with McDonalds for many decades now, reason why everyone has an
understanding of who the company is and what they do.
McDonalds mission and values stand for “McDonald's brand mission is to be our
customers' favorite place and way to eat and drink. Our worldwide operations are
aligned around a global strategy called the Plan to Win, which center on an exceptional
customer experience – People, Products, Place, Price and Promotion. We are committed
to continuously improving our operations and enhancing our customers' experience”. It
is obvious in their mission statement that they seek to offer the best fast food dinning
experience which is also economically friendly, yet, they don’t seem to mention any
concerns regarding the health of their customers.
People are aware that the food served in the restaurant isn’t the healthiest choice, yet,
everyone seems to love it and eat it regardless of this. But imagine you were informed
that the food you love so much is in fact not supposed to be served to humans. That the
food you’ve been eating since you were a child is treated with chemicals that affect your
health in more ways than the health risks you were already aware of. This happened to
many McDonald customers after Jamie Oliver explained what pink slime is; while he
stated that this was used in the well-known and loved fast-food restaurant.
Chef Jamie Oliver did an episode in 2011 on his ABC TV show Food Revolution
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explaining how “Pink Slime” was used in the beef of fast food restaurants. He
highlighted how eating this was harmful for one’s health, possibly leading to a deadly
disease. On this episode, Jamie Oliver showed a group of children and their parents,
where the beef they buy comes from and then he showed how pink slime is done. He
stated in his episode “Basically, we’re taking a product that would be sold at the
cheapest form for dogs and after this process we can give it to humans”. The parents and
the children were in shock and didn’t know that many fast food restaurants and school
cafeterias served this ammonia-processed beef to people.
Some fast food restaurants, including Burger King and Taco Bell, changed the recipe of
their meals to a pink slime free recipe when the crisis stroke. But McDonalds resisted
Jamie Oliver’s pressure and didn’t change the recipe until February of 2012.
Literature Review
The health issues behind the McDonalds crisis and the strategy they used to protect its
image have captured the attention of some scholars. Morrison explains in his Advertising
Age article how McDonald USA approach to the crisis damaged the corporation because
they created a Twitter Campaign that allowed users to retweet their opinion. “Essentially,
McDonald’s gave social-media users too much control, said Robin Grant, global
managing director of social-media agency We Are Social” (Morrison 2012, 1). Since
pink slime could affect the health of McDonalds customers, many of them used a
campaign that was intended to shape a positive image of the company to express their
disgust and negative opinion.
On the other hand, Morrison argues how the company’s image suffered nation wide, yet,
many other international public relations teams tackled the crisis differently, therefore the
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crisis didn’t expand to other countries were McDonalds has franchises. Morrison argues
that the opinion of the customers could break the company in this crisis; thus, the
campaign should not give a lot of power to people. Canada created a campaign were
people could ask questions regarding the health values of the company and they would
respond with YouTube videos that showed how everything was made. These videos
didn’t give viewers the opportunity to comment, reason why, they didn’t have the power
of damaging the organization with criticism and negative commentaries. The video
campaign tried to rebuild McDonalds’ image to one that cares for the health of their
consumers.
Lee and Shavitt study the implications and reasons why it is hard for McDonalds to
recover from such crisis and build an image that is characterized for being healthy. Since
McDonald is a brand that everyone in the United States knows, it is hard for McDonalds
to change the way people look at the organization. Lee and Shavitt argue that big brands
like McDonalds have a perceived understanding, which they define as “epistemic feeling
resulting from a person’s metacognitive assessment of the state of his or her own
knowledge about a target (222)”. People believe they have an understanding regarding
the values and image of well-known brand. “Moreover, exposure to a cue, such as
“healthfulness,” which is not conceptually fluent for McDonald’s, should not improve
attitudes towards McDonald’s” (223). Since the organization was already known as
unhealthy the crisis only reinforced this characteristic, and building an image that
communicates the opposite requires a clever public relations strategy.
There are many public relations strategies and models to manage a crisis, but the
situational crisis communication theory is the dominant theory when fighting one. This
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theory suggests that “after providing necessary instructing and adjusting information,
organizations select from four response options: deny, diminish, rebuild, and reinforce”
(Fisher, Austin and Jin 2011, 347). Denying the crisis consists of attacks to the accuser
and denial of the crisis. Diminishing includes two strategies, which are to excuse and
justify the reasons behind the crisis. The rebuilding strategy is based on compensation
and apology from the organization. Finally, reinforcing is based on bolstering,
ingratiation and victimage to improve a company’s image.
Methodology, summary of texts analyzed, thematic analysis
After a negative reaction from the McDonalds’ consumers because of the products they
used to serve them, the company responded with a rebuild situational crisis
communication theory, meaning, they apologized by changing the recipe of the famous
burgers.
To make the strategy stronger and compensate, McDonald created several social media
campaigns in Twitter and Facebook, filmed informational videos to promote the
freshness of their products, and added new themes to their webpage to communicate
healthfulness. McDonalds was trying to change the perceived understanding of the
unhealthy brand regardless of how difficult this is to well establish brands.
Twitter Campaigns
McDonalds started two twitter campaigns in January 19 of 2012. First they started a
campaign based on #MeettheFarmers which was themed to follow stories from farmers
that produced the fresh products for the McDonalds restaurants. Later on they posted a
new hash tag, #McDstories, which was supposed to make twitter users, tell positive
experiences they’ve had while dinning in McDonalds. This campaign backfired since it
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was trying to create a healthy image of the brand, yet, people didn’t view it as healthy
and the pink slime crisis only intensified their view. Twitter users used this opportunity to
voice out their negative opinion regarding the use of pink slime in the burgers. Morrison
made reference to the failure of this campaign explaining that McDonalds gave a lot of
control to people that were mad about pink slime.
“The restored brand understanding could become either more positive or more negative,
depending on the new information” (Lee and Shavitt 2009, 223). In McDonalds case, the
Twitter campaign negatively affected and created more coverage on the crisis. This
caused McDonald to take down all of their tweets. Yet, screenshots were taken, which
created even more damage.
Informative Video
McDonalds Canada approached the crisis differently by creating informative videos
named “Our Food, Your Questions” that explained how the restaurant creates their
products. Karin Campbell, senior manager of external communications at McDonalds
Canada, said “we could certainly d see pervasive myths out there, so we decided to take
on those myths head-on and just clarify some of the info by developing a platform”. The
process was based on McDonald customers asking questions about topics regarding the
crisis. Then, McDonalds would film 1-minute videos and uploaded it to their YouTube
channel to answer their inquiries, and clear up their image. They didn’t allow users to
comment on the video, which helped build the image without any negative comments.
Since these videos were uploaded online, they managed to impact the United States,
attracting more than 1.9 million views.
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McDonalds Farmers Ad
“Meet some of the hard-working people dedicated to providing high quality food every
day. Get the story behind your McDonald’s favorite” was the slogan for the
advertisements that showcased McDonalds’ organic and fresh products used in the
restaurants. One specific ad dealt with cattle and the farmers that provided beef to
restaurant. The video highlights the quality of the cattle used to make the meat and the
family environment from the people who provide it. They tell the specific story of one
farmer, Steve Foglesong: "Raising Cattle and a Family". One of the aspects McDonalds
chooses to emphasize in the video is the fact that Steve is a father and a grandfather,
therefore he is worried for the health of his children, but he trusts the food provided by
McDonalds because of its freshness and quality,
These sets of videos were uploaded in McDonalds’ Facebook page, and the response
from the followers was negative because they thought McDonalds was lying and telling
hypocritical comments, since it is a fact that McDonalds ingredients don’t come directly
from the farmers they are presenting in the videos.
The reaction of the people could be caused because of the perceived understanding they
have from the brand. Also, they uploaded the videos in a social-media platform, which
gives control to Facebook users to determine the result and effectiveness of the campaign.
McDonalds Webpage
McDonalds also changed the main themes of the webpage to make it seem more
conscious and worried for the health of their customers. They added a section dedicated
to nutritional choices were they promote healthy values. McDonalds states that they are
changing with their customer to become a fresher restaurant. The main quote of this
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section of the webpage is “Changing. Together.You told us you're trying harder to be
more nutrition-minded for yourself and for your family. We listened. That's why we have
been accelerating our efforts to serve food you feel better about eating and to help you
make informed nutrition choices”.
McDonalds also list the ingredients they use, and they specifically repeat the use of
“100% beef patties”. Consequently, a section dedicated to kids nutrition was added to the
site where the company promotes family values and reinforces the importance of a good
nutrition in the development of children. They also acknowledge the responsibility they
have because children love McDonalds’ food.
Effectiveness And Ethics Of The Strategies
McDonalds is a brand that is known worldwide as an American restaurat that serves fast
food for low prices. McDonalds strengths as an organization are the economical prices
they present and the quickness of the product delivery. Yet, McDonalds weakness
regarding the brand includes the health risk that the food they serve could cause. This
weakness is a fact that is known by everyone. When Jamie Oliver’s episode came out the
notion of this weakness only got stronger and McDonalds’ unhealthy image became more
solid than ever.
McDonalds then created a campaign to restore their image, setting as a goal to be thought
as a consciously healthy company. Yet, unhealthy is a word that identified the brand, and
the campaign had a negative effect since it managed to intensified this characteristic. The
public viewed every move McDonalds made as hypocritical and fake. McDonalds
couldn’t promote the company as healthy because regardless of the fact that they were
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serving pink slime in the burgers, they were still serving unhealthy meals.
Allowing users to comment, retweet, and share in McDonalds social media, backfired the
company. They received many comments with critics that attracted other media outlets to
cover the story. When the company realized the failure of the campaign they decided to
take down all of the videos and tweets, yet, the story was already out there. People took
screenshots of the campaign and this rapidly spread all over the web.
McDonalds Canada realized how badly the public relations team in the United States had
responded to this crisis. Therefore, they created a section on their webpage where
customers could ask questions regarding their thoughts and misconception and they
would respond by showing the truth in a video. This strategy helped the organization
because the videos went viral online, many viewers were persuaded to believe that
McDonalds wasn’t using pink slime, yet, this videos didn’t try to present McDonalds as
something they weren’t, healthy.
McDonalds didn’t stop here. The company created a section in their webpage that
promoted healthy values and talked about the reality of their products. They present each
ingredient and their healthy values to create a sense of trust with their customers. They
also provided a section dedicated to kids and the nutritional values needed for their
growth. McDonalds use this strategy to seem more conscious, regardless of the fact that
they are in the bottom of the list of what a healthy diet is considered to be.
McDonalds overall campaign didn’t reach the goal the company intended. After the crisis
they wanted to recover their image to one that they never had. This led to a negative
reaction from the public, and more damage for the organization. McDonalds didn’t use
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social media as they should have and clearly had to do another campaign to rebuild from
what was supposed to save them. Canada’s campaign and the webpage nutritional facts
section were informative and truthful, creating a positive reaction, but it was not enough
to recover McDonalds brand.
Implications
Lee and Shavitt explained how the understanding of a well-known brand could become
more positive or more negative depending on the information that the campaign is giving.
They explain how difficult it is for a brand to change how the publics sees them because
of the good or bad values that represent them.
Taking this argument into consideration I believe that McDonalds SCCT rebuild response
was a failure for the company. People didn’t change their perceived understanding
regardless of the many attempts McDonalds did to be viewed differently. They tackled
many topics including health, family values, responsibility, and nutrition, but none of
them were enough to change the understanding of a brand that has been part of the
American culture for 70 years.
McDonalds is still fighting the crisis Jamie Oliver started. They continue to promote the
company in a healthier light by having athletes as celebrity endorsers and tweeting about
health issues. Yet, they haven’t recovered a market they lost, which included many
costumers that once considered McDonalds a practical meal. Personally, I am one of
those customers they lost, and I haven’t eaten in McDonalds since I found out about the
pink slime. Regardless of the fact that I am aware that they don’t use this in the burgers
any more, I felt cheated as a customer and I don’t trust how they cook their food. Maybe
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there isn’t more pink slime, but there might be another product that uses a similar process
that we might not be aware of. Just like me, many costumers felt cheated and lied to, and
therefore, they don’t trust the restaurant and what they serve. McDonalds will continue to
try to regain trust, but for now, they have lost credibility as a restaurant and a brand.
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References
Bloomgarden-Smoke, Kara. "'Pink Slime': Health Crisis Or Misunderstood Meat
Product?" The Christian Science Monitor - 10 (2012).
Fisher, Brooke., Lucinda Austin., and Yan Jin. How publics respond to crisis
communication strategies: The interplay of information form and source. Public
Relations Review 37, (2011): 345-353.
Lee, K., Shavitt, S. Can McDonald’s food ever be considered healthful? Metacognitive
experiences affect the perceived understanding of a brand. Journal of Marketing
Research XLVI, (2009): 222-233.
Morrison, M. Canadian social-media push has halo effect for McDonalds in the U.S.
Advertising Age 83, (2012)
Schultz, EJ. "Beef Industry Bruised by 'Pink Slime' Battle." Advertising Age 83, (2012):
2-20
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