McDonald’s is still lovin’ its Moms
McDonald’s is still lovin’ its Moms’ Quality Correspondents (MQC) program, but with some upcoming flare –social media style.
Come June, the fast-food chain plans to unveil a month-long blog to capture the food-curious moms’ honest feedback regarding their continued behind-the-scenes exploration of McDonald’s food operations and nutritional values, said McDonald’s spokesperson, Tara Hayes.
Specifically, the Mcdonaldsmoms.com blog proposes to initially feature real-time interviews with the moms during their June 15-16 visit to the Moms Quality Correspondents Summit to be held at corporate headquarters in Oak Brook, Ill.
“This is another opportunity for the moms, in real-time, to share their experiences and for someone else to have that same unprecedented access to the McDonald’s system,” said Hayes.
Launched in April 2007, the program selected six mothers from across the country to serve as citizen journalists detailing their unparalleled access to the company’s food industry. The moms, in turn, use their privilege to provide other moms honest feedback about the McDonald’s food menu so they too can make more informed food choices for their families.
Joanna Canizares
Never strangers to their online influence, the six, diverse moms –Joanna Canizares, of Florida; Monica Fuentes, of Arizona; Tina Hoxie, of Michigan; Gilda McHenry, of Pennsylvania; Tonia Welling, of Arkansas; and 2008 newcomer, Crystal Hanson, of Wisconsin- already enjoy a 14,000-strong online community attracted to their existing online journals, videos and Q & A section.
However, McDonald’s realized that with the explosion of social online networking a blog would continue to programmatically build upon the MQC’s ongoing communications with other moms, who are often the individuals making their children’s food choices, said Hayes.
“It’s a place where we recognize we need to be and want to be,” she said.
Blog visitors can expect the first day of online sharing to unveil, what Hayes called, “the evolution of the Happy Meal,” as the moms learn about and react to McDonald’s 30th celebration of the popular kids’ meal, born in June 1979.
Day Two of the summit will express other blogging tidbits as corporate further reveal details about McDonald’s new McCafé® espresso-blend coffees –a warm treat that MQC Joanna Canizares already eagerly shares with family and friends by sending them McCafé® drink “gifts,” or virtual applications that are available through Facebook.
“Facebook has been such a creative, evolutionary social tool,” said Canizares, adding that she also joined many of the related FB McDonald’s pages and associated groups to help push her industry insight into the public forefront.
“I (also) get my message across either via a status update or a post to my wall about the next McDonald’s trip,” added Canizares, a 38-year-old mother of two sons, ages 15 and 10, the latter whose near-lifelong Chicken McNuggets® craze helped prompt her to become a MQC in 2007.
Canizares welcomes the blog and traditional online journals since she can broaden her message beyond her FB friends and family. However, the moms’ messages haven’t always been met with positivity, she acknowledged. Some people generally criticize her decision to represent McDonald’s, which she takes in stride since she too was once skeptical.
Some of these raised eyebrows, including hers figuratively evened out over time as Canizares said she reported on more and more field trips and learned “slight,” yet impactful revelations, such as the fact that McDonald’s uses real eggs despite their seemingly unnatural round shapes when served.
Others simply offered unusual commentary. When McDonald’s launched in 2008 the Web site’s Q & A feature, for example, Canizares said she received outlandish questions, such as whether McDonald’s uses lighter fluid in their cooking oil (answer: no!).
She and Hayes also recognize that some still scrutinize whether McDonald’s censors or limits the moms’ published perspectives and that perhaps the blogs will be similarly scrutinized.
“The journals are strictly their words as they submit them. They get directly submitted to the Web site and then posted,” said Hayes. “You can ask any of the moms, like Joanna, if this is what they wrote and they will say: ‘yup.’”
“Yup,” Canizares quickly concurred. “Everything that I have said or written has been posted as is” with the minor exception of McDonald’s reviewing pieces for any propriety information, she noted.
“It is extremely important (that people understand that truth) because the last thing you want is for the person you’re speaking to thinking that you are being bought or influenced by someone. We (the moms) have really taken the stance that we are going to ask the questions…because we want the answers,” said Canizares.
As long as the moms continue to have questions, Hayes said the program’s future will remain bright and McDonald’s will continue to devise new communication avenues for them to broaden their audience.
While the blog will continue to follow the moms until the end of June, McDonald’s already plans to tap another social media opportunity that will take place a month later in corporate McDonald’s back yard at the Chicago Sheraton Hotel & Towers.
From July 23-25, fellow MQC and mother of three, Monica Fuentes, will represent the MQC program while maintaining a booth at the sold out BlogHer Annual Conference, which is expected to attract as many as 13,000 individuals of the blogging community.
As for the rest of 2009, Hayes assured the public that McDonald’s and its MQC program will continue to forge strong connections with the social media community, as well as those off line, to encourage others to believe in the food quality and nutrition that McDonald’s, and now the mom correspondents, believe in themselves.
Post by Marissa Yaremich
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After curiosity and journalism lured Connecticut native Marissa Yaremich from city to city throughout the past decade, she shocked herself, as well as friends and family, by opting to leave her New York City television job to settle down with her future husband and their prospective children in quiet Pennsylvania. By returning to her writing roots and tending to the laundry pile sans loose change, the thirty something happily turned into her dreaded "D" word: domesticated. Well, sorta... Marissa.Yaremich@momswhoblog.com |
