On January 18, McDonald’s launched the Twitter promotion #McDStories with the following tweets from the @McDonalds account:

“When u make something w/pride, people can taste it,” – McD potato supplier #McDStories http://t.co/HaPM5G9F

Meet some of the hard-working people dedicated to providing McDs with quality food every day #McDStories http://t.co/BoNIwRJS

From there, the #McDStories hashtag was born, but probably not in the way McDonald’s was hoping. Negative tweets about the fast food giant began to surface, ranging from crude to funny to devastating zings.

We used Social Radar to analyze conversations online.

#McDStories conversation topic cloud

Since the #McDStories campaign began, 78% of mentions have been negative.

Content distribution

An average of 86% of #McDStories mentions came via males.

McDonald’s sentiment

Overall conversations around McDonald’s are currently 52% positive.

Marketers are constantly told to engage with their customers via social media. But is this a case where a traditional print ad might have generated more positive buzz?

 

McDonald’s McRib is back. The popular pork sandwich with a cult following returned to McDonald’s menu until November 14.

This time McDonald’s is playing up the barbecue sandwich’s elusiveness in a social media campaign designed to lure in new, younger fans. In a digital game called “The Quest for the Golden McRib,” the idea is to find 10 online golden McRibs hidden in cyberspace while interacting with colorful characters.

We used Social Radar to analyze conversations about McDonald’s and McRib online.

McRib buzz

Buzz around McDonald’s increased today as conversations around McRib skyrocketed.

McDonald’s sentiment

Positive conversations around McDonald’s spiked to their highest point of the month today.

McRib is currently being mentioned in 24% of all McDonald’s conversations online.

Dunkin Donuts is facing off against McDonald’s and Starbucks. The chain, whose parent company Dunkin’ Brands will start trading as a public company today, makes about 60% of its U.S. sales from coffee and other drinks. Dunkin’ Brands references Starbucks eight times in its IPO documents for investors.

On Tuesday evening, the IPO of Dunkin Brands Group Inc. was priced at $19 a share, raising $427.5 million. The franchise, which owns both the Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin-Robbins chains, plans to use the funds to expand beyond its Northeastern roots into the western U.S. and other parts of the country.

We used Social Radar to analyze conversations online.

Dunkin Donuts vs. Starbucks mentions within coffee conversations

Dunkin Donuts has a LONG way to go to catch Starbucks chatter within coffee conversations online.

Dunkin Donuts sentiment

Conversations around Dunkin Donuts are currently an average of 70% positive. The word ‘coffee’ appears in 13% of Dunkin Donuts conversations.

Starbucks sentiment

Not only did Starbucks generate significantly more overall chatter than Dunkin Donuts, it was also more positive. Conversations around Starbucks were an average of 77% positive. The word ‘coffee’ appears in 22% of Starbucks conversations.

Dunkin Donuts faces an uphill battle if it plans to dethrone Starbucks anytime soon.

McDonald’s began hyping its National Hiring Day on April 19 by launching an ambitious campaign today to recruit 50,000 people. The push aims to reposition the derogatory term McJob as a desirable employment opportunity rather than a low-paying, dead-end job.

We used Social Radar to run analysis around McDonald’s new campaign.

McJob sentiment

Sentiment around McJob mentions is currently 55% negative.

McDonalds buzz

Overall chatter around McDonalds is not up due to the new campaign announcement. Chatter around McDonald’s was at its highest point this month on March 8 following the announcement that Subway had surpassed McDonald’s as the world’s largest restaurant chain.

McJob is currently being mentioned in 4% of McDonald’s conversations. Will the new campaign improve McJob sentiment before April 19?

Facebook continues to become one of the most important platforms for brands to engage. The Next Web published a list of the top 25 most ‘liked’ brands on Facebook. Do more Facebook ‘likes’ mean increased chatter for brands online? We used Social Radar to run analysis on Web chatter around each of these brands in 2010. Compare the lists below.

Interestingly, there seems to be little correlation between which brands have the most Facebook ‘likes’ and which brands are being talked about most online.

The chart below contains the brands ranked in order of most Facebook ‘likes’, with bars representing online chatter.

The McRib phenomenon is generating buzz online this week, as the incredibly popular pork sandwich returns to McDonald’s for six weeks.

McDonald’s offers the product as a limited-time promotion to keep it relevant and appealing to customers. The result is a cult following, with blogs and fan websites dedicated to the sandwich.

We used Social Radar to monitor buzz. McRib chatter increased dramatically this week. The sandwich is currently being mentioned more online than any of the major fast food chain restaurants.

McRib chatter vs. McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Taco Bell

Apparently absence really does make the heart grow fonder.

Reports surfaced this week that McDonald’s may cut health insurance for its nearly 30,000 hourly workers unless U.S. regulators waive a requirement of new health care legislation championed by President Barack Obama.

The words health, healthcare or insurance are currently appearing in an astounding 41% of conversations around McDonald’s online.

Earlier this month Burger King introduced nine new breakfast items – including blueberry biscuits, pancake platters, and Seattle’s Best coffee — and launched a major breakfast marketing blitz with an eye toward eating up some of McDonald’s morning business.

The move was Burger King’s biggest introduction of new items at one time ever, in attempt to take breakfast market share from McDonald’s.

We ran analysis on Burger King conversations over the past month. On the day of the launch, the word ‘breakfast’ appeared in 25% of Burger King related posts online.

Breakfast mentions within Burger King chatter

Breakfast accounts for about 12 percent of Burger King revenue, while McDonald’s gets one-fourth of its revenue from breakfast, according to Burger King Chief Marketing Officer Mike Kappitt.

With the exception of Burger King’s breakfast announcement day, McDonald’s appears in the breakfast conversation much more often than Burger King currently.

Burger King vs. McDonald’s mentions within overall breakfast chatter

Sentiment around Burger King breakfast has only been 72% positive since the announcement September 7.

Burger King breakfast sentiment

Burger King will be airing six television spots over an 11-week cycle that introduce consumers to each of its nine new breakfast menu items. We will be monitoring buzz over the next few months and will check back in to let you know if Burger King achieves its goal to improve awareness.

With same-store sales down 7% in the U.S. during the most recent quarter, KFC is attempting to transform itself into KGC.

KFC has been a trending topic on Twitter most of the week thanks to coupons announced on The Oprah Winfrey show on Tuesday, May 5 for two pieces of chicken, two sides and a biscuit. The coupons could be downloaded at UnThinkKFC.com until the end of May 6.

KFC then announced on May 7 that due to “overwhelming response” it can no longer accept the free coupon, but will introduce a rain check program to take care of inconvenienced customers.

KFC’s promotion quickly turned into an exercise in crisis management as long lines and angry customers shared their experiences online. Overall online chatter around KFC has been generally positive following the announcement.

Though the positive chatter has trended slightly down over the past two days while negative chatter has trended up.

This giveaway is KFC’s second national giveaway in the last two weeks. The chain declared Monday, April 27 “UNFry Day” and gave away 4 million pieces of chicken. In addition to a full-page ad in USA Today, KFC also unveiled a new ad campaign with a TV spot produced by Academy Award-winning director Errol Morris containing endorsements from celebrated chefs Sandra Lee, editor-in-chief of Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade Magazine, and TV One’s G. Garvin. Despite all of these tactics, the Oprah promotion generated considerably higher chatter for KFC than UNFry day. So marketers take note — free food isn’t exciting enough to talk about unless Oprah is involved.

As a point of reference, we compared KFC chatter to McDonald’s, the fast food chain typically generating the largest amount of chatter online. KFC spiked past McDonald’s during both promotions. But can KFC sustain chatter in the long term? Will customers like the grilled chicken enough to go back and keep talking about it when they have to pay for it?

We received a lot of feedback on yesterday’s Social Radar Top 50 (March 2009) post and wanted to provide some additional thoughts. A brand is a promise; a collective of perceptions. Our Social Radar Top 50 Social Brands list was calculated based on overall conversation volume, including millions of blog posts, news feeds, forums, social networks and Twitter posts. To determine our top 50 brands, we aggregated a massive list of thousands of the words and brands on the web during March 2009, then conducted further analysis to rank the results. Our list measures the number of unique individuals or sources that posted content about each brand during March 2009 rather than the overall number of mentions, which would be more heavily influenced by big fans who post frequently about a specific brand.

We did not base our list on number of searches, which you could easily do using Google Trends. We measured conversations and web chatter. If you’re a brand manager, do you want to know who’s searching for your brand? Absolutely. Do you also want to know how many people are talking about your product online? Absolutely. If you need to do some home repair, say, fix your cabinets, you’ll probably start with a Google search. But are you going to blog about your experience? Probably not unless it’s extraordinarily good or bad.

We also did not base our list on revenues. The Business Week / Interbrand list of top global brands for 2008 is evaluated based on how much the brand is likely to earn for the company in the future. Interbrand uses a combination of analysts’ projections, company financial documents, and its own qualitative and quantitative analysis to arrive at a net present value of those earnings.

Coke and McDonald’s are both on Interbrand’s top 10 list, but both brands were outside of our top 50. Social media doesn’t necessarily correlate to market share. How often are you blogging about the Coke you bought from the vending machine? On the other hand, technology is always advancing and people often chat or post about new updates and features. Check out the chart below comparing chatter for Coke, McDonald’s and iPhone throughout March 2009.

There are many reasons why products have large market share. Microsoft products are still predominately used in many corporate settings, and in some cases employees at those corporations might prefer to use Apple products but aren’t given the choice. Apple’s market share has increased dramatically in the last few years. Who knows if Apple will surpass Microsoft in the future, but they are generating more buzz than Microsoft on the web thanks to passionate Mac and iPhone users.

Social media is evolving. Companies are just now beginning to hire social media strategists to interact with consumers. Social media is still a low priority for many large corporations because of lack of perceived ROI. So they are still experimenting with ways to become part of the conversation. Companies that can create real-time interaction and involvement with their customers will be best prepared to succeed in the new media world. How can companies capitalize on or increase online buzz? Will it translate to increased revenue in the future?