McDonalds put faith in staff to act as brand voice

Three cheers for McDonalds who are putting faith in their staff to act as the voice of the McDonalds brand, as PR Week reported recently.

Nick Hindle, McDonalds PR Chief, said at the PR and the Media conference that

"Clear messaging is delivered by people, not corporations. We need to inform and empower staff. They are the ones who talk about McDonalds on a daily basis. They are far more believable than a corporation."

He goes onto say:

"You don't manage your brand these days, you influence it... We should give staff the confidence they need - some will talk to the press, some will blog, some will talk to their mates down the pub. It requires a lot of bottle to give up control, but the upsides are significant."

This will be highly familiar to anyone who has read Naked Conversations;  ( book,  blog ) Basically, the premise is we're entering a new era when marketing won't be broadcast based ( i.e I, the brand, speak when I want to speak), but conversation led - that is, I the brand talk to you the consumer when you want to listen.

The point is that brand conversations are happening anyway; as a corporation, you can either try and control it ( no chance ) - or you join it, and you let your people speak.

Consumers / Candidates are incredibly savvy these days, and can smell didactic corporate-comms a mile off. So if you want to engage the two C's, what other choice have you got than to let your people talk? (Naked Conversations envisages a time when consumers will be distrustful of brands that dont have a staff voice.)

All of this is particularly important for recruitment, of course. I'd bet my house that everyone who reads this blog has been guilty at some point of producing recruitment marketing that had precious little to do with the actual experience of the vast majority of employees. That was possible when the method was broadcast (print ads, brochures, web 1.0) and when those employees don't have a voice. But employers trying to project a false / romanticised   image in the era of blogs, myspace and twitter however are going to be in big trouble (and with good reason).

So well done to the McD people.. if you have the cajones to do it, then perhaps other employers (with less to lose, frankly) will follow suit.

Paul Harrison

Comments

[John Whitehurst]

very interesting and true

a great presentation about brand conversations on the IAB website

i think i put the link into this website before

John Hegerty from BBH

[thomas delorme]

another company putting faith in its staff to promote the company/jobs is Air France :
www.inside-airfrance.com (still in its very early stages but ...)

[Paul Harrison]

That AirFrance initiative is really interesting Thomas.. I don't know about in France, but over here the airline industry is particularly vociferous online http://www.pprune.org/forums/index.php , http://www.cabincrew.com/ccnetwork/default.asp etc so a good strategy no doubt to harness some of that energy positively.