McDonald’s – Branding from the Inside Out
March 12, 2008 by Susan Gunelius
Filed under Marketing
What better way to boost your brand image than by starting from within? I always tell clients that one of the most important aspects of building a successful brand is making sure your employees understand and live your brand promise. McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD) is buying into that strategy with the launch of Station M, the McDonald’s employee blog.
Station M will connect employees at nearly 15,000 McDonald’s locations across the United States and Canada and will be a location for employees to interact with each other as well as the McDonald’s headquarters in Illinois.
So what do we think of internal blogs? I think they’re a great idea. Of course, the major problem is the lack of “open communication” that is truly allowed on internal blogs. I have to assume that employees can’t really speak freely, but it’s still a step in the right direction in terms of communicating, particularly in terms of communicating brand messages and boosting the brand image among employees.
What do you think? Is McDonald’s Station M employee blog a useful tool or a publicity stunt?
Photo © AdamL212 via Flickr
Tags: McDonald’s, McDonald’s employee blog, McDonald’s blog, McDonald’s employee blog, internal branding, brand promise, brand communication, brand message, brand image
Considering the McDonald’s workflow is designed to be as ubiquitous and automated as possible, I can’t imagine what employees would want to tell one another. I can picture a number of posts to the tune of “Doesn’t it suck that we have to count all the Big Macs we throw out! What’s with that, dude?” I have the feeling that any insightful behinds-the-scenes information written by a rogue Ivy Leaguer paying his way through school, in an ironic and anonymous way, will get censored before it hits the light of day.
I’m opting for “publicity stunt.” I think that there are many other initiatives that McDonald’s should adopt with regard to internal marketing and genuine, quality branding of their service employees, but those things would require time and money-time and money McDonald’s traditionally does not seem to want to spend on front-line service employees. The blog will be instantaneous, highly visible, and inexpensive-just like the job applications they use as tray liners. Says a lot about how highly McDonald’s (and others, to be fair) esteems its front-line service employees. But I digress. :-) Hosting an internal blog is pretty much a necessity for a company like McDonald’s these days-doing so now is hardly ahead of the curve. They’re actually a little late on this to be considered to be conscientious, let alone progressive, enlightened, or truly concerned about their front-line service employees. (Not that you’re suggesting otherwise, Susan. And I appreciate your post.) Of course, when the public hears of it, some will be so impressed. Hear hear, Prescott!