It's all about who's in control

This week’s Business Class topic is Communication and in the blog we are to talk about some examples of companies that had good communicative ideas and companies that had bad communicative ideas.

I just came across a good example of the first last week. I was in a hurry to buy something for my class shared lunch, as it were already 11 o’clock in the morning and I still had to take the bus from Britomart to Parnell. Suddenly, an idea popped in my mind: “I’m gonna buy pizza!” Now, I’d already tasted Sal’s Pizza and was looking for something different this time, and I only could think about one other big pizza company: Domino’s. This entire story I’m telling you just to explain why this company’s “pizza tracker” was so useful to me and why it simply caught my attention. The tracker is nothing more than a screen that tells you where your pizza is (if it is still being filled or if it is already in the oven) and how long it is gonna take for you to put your hands on it. Just looking at it made me feel a little bit less worried while I planned my next steps in order to get to school on time. I just wished other kinds of companies would use the same idea, so I’d never again have to worry about the status of products I bought online.

As for the last, I couldn’t really think of something, so I just looked it up on the internet and found some interesting stories. Perhaps some of the most known examples I saw were about companies that tried to use social networks as a way to get closer to their customers, but ended up becoming the subject of jokes. One that I liked involved McDonald’s and Twitter. The biggest American food company created this sponsored hashtag #McDStories for people to share stories related to the Happy Meal. What was supposed to increase awareness of the brand (if it’s ever possible to be more aware of McDonald’s anywhere in Earth) ended up seriously damaging their image. Objectors of them, ex-employees or simply common people wanting to make a good joke began twitting negative stories that were always appearing on everyone’s timelines.

Therefore, what I think one food company can learn from the other is that maybe McDonald’s should’ve “tracked” what people used to think about them before launching their campaign. Maybe if they had a screen that showed people’s thoughts like Domino’s pizza tracker… oh, yeah, there are companies that could check it for them! This way they would’ve avoided all the embarrassment.

P.S.: I’ve noticed I was not the only one to use McDonald’s as an example of bad communication, but still they manage to maintain a good image all in all…