Problems and Suggestions

Although the IMC tools of McDonald’s looks very perfect, it still remains a big loophole in crisis public relationships, which is an indispensable aspect in integrated marketing communication.

It is easy to understand for everyone that food safety is the most significant factor in food industry, especially for McDonald’s, as one of the leaders in fast food industry. When a food company’s edibility safety and nutrition quality has been questioned, just issued a statement simply is not enough at all. Unfortunately, McDonald’s experienced such an event and handled its crisis public relationships in a terrible way. Reviewing the whole event, McDonald’s issued four statements from beginning to end after the media exposure that Shanghai Fuxi company has offered expired raw materials to McDonald’s and KFC in 20th, July in 2014. At the same time, McDonald’s issued their first statement, which has the least mistake and to define its attitude firmly. Sadly, this statement forgot to mention some stakeholders like government, media and customer, which inferior to their biggest rival, KFC. Then barely ten hours later, a second statement had been issued in haste, which looks totally the same as Yum’s statement. The last two statements issued on 24th, July and 28th, July respectively, are full of mistake and logic chaos.

In some ways, how a company handled with emergencies can reflect its IMC capability and capacity. The problems of McDonald’s crisis public relationship processing methods is mainly in the following aspects: 1. The lack of sincerity.
Actually, attitude is the most important thing in managing unexpected emergency. Throughout the whole “Fuxi” event, what McDonald’s have shown is insincere and shrinking responsibility. They even add a link that could not be opened by customers to a picture on their Sina Weibo. This will inevitably make people feel that their apology are hypocrisy and too casual. 2. Inadequately time of issuing statements.
With the Internet development in such an information ages, the respond to public must be quick enough and be appropriate. Obviously McDonald’s do not fully understand this point since its insincere attitude as the premise. The same situation happened in 28th, May in 2014, when six men beat a woman in death in a McDonald’s restaurant in Shandong province. It was distressing that McDonald’s only sent out a message on Sina Weibo until two days after the tragedy. 3. The confusion content of statements.
Both in Shandong case and Fuxi case, statements issued by McDonald’s is in a mess with suspicion of evading the crucial point. What’s more, the logic and content between different statements in one event is somehow a little inconsecutive, which deepen the bad impression.

In view of the present weakness in crisis public relationship and considering other strengths in McDonald’s IMC field, following suggestions are proposed for reference only: 1. Accelerate the reaction speed on the occurrence of unexpected events and clarify the position of McDonald’s in a clear, concise way immediately in the various Internet platforms like Wechat, Sina Weibo and prestigious media. 2. The first principle of crisis public relationship is take responsibility, from this aspect, attitude is decisive factor to earn public’s respect and build an excellent brand image. For this reason, McDonald’s should pay more attention to corporate social responsibility and show their determination to public via new media tools and traditional media. 3. Ambassador or some key administrative staff of McDonald’s participation in public activities related to food healthy also helps in brand reputation and awareness.