After winning Twitter’s Best Brand Presence 2021 award, our goal became to double down on what was working while finding new ways to innovate. We’d successfully established McDonald’s as a modern cultural icon in the upper echelon of brands on Twitter. 2022 was about keeping our foot on the gas – we set out to engage new, emerging sub-communities, with our beloved brand voice.
We’ve cemented our Twitter voice as a relatable persona – a real, human McDonald's superfan behind the keyboard. Whether it’s listening to what fans want back on the menu or staying in touch with the community's interests, our Community Manager is always tapped in with our core fans. But in order to stay relevant in today’s crowded landscape, it was imperative that we continue growing our audience by tapping into subcultures around the social web and interacting with other high profile accounts.
When we saw an increased interest in gaming among our follower base, we created bespoke content we knew would resonate with these subcommunities. Like a custom
@xbox controller for stealing fries, a readerboard announcing the @destinythegame release, and custom artwork for fans of @finalfantasyvii.
When Bitcoin’s value began to plummet our Community Manager tweeted in support of crypto social media managers, gaining press attention. And it didn’t stop there. After Elon Musk urged us via Twitter to accept Dogecoin, we cleverly responded back urging Telsa to accept our made up currency “Grimacecoin”. Our interaction sparked massive engagement, news headlines, and even inspired the real creation of Grimacecoin. The meme coin jumped 285,000% in just a few hours. To this day, we still receive ample comments asking when Grimacecoin will become a reality, keeping the McDonald’s brand in the conversation around the hottest cultural movement of 2022.
With our goal to be the most fan-centric brand on Twitter, we continued to insert McDonald’s into everyday topical moments. When Instagram was down, we took the opportunity to poke fun at our famously fickle ice cream machines. While promoting the new Pokemon Happy Meal toys, we showed just how much we know our fans by telling them what to order based on their favorite character. And when it became extremely difficult to snag Taylor Swift tickets, we made the joke that the beloved, discontinued snack wrap was easier to get your hands on.
Our efforts paid off in huge ways. By focusing our organic strategy on staying real-time and penetrating new subcultures with our content, we were able to gain 364,936 new followers on Twitter, an overall 8.3% growth. On the platform we had 147,700,155 impressions with over 1,625,092 engagements and our average Twitter post reach is 53% higher than our next closest competitor.
