McDonald's Brand Sentiment Drops With 'Signs' Campaign, but Not by Much

Brands were surprisingly quiet during last night's Golden Globes on social media, except for McDonald's with a new TV campaign dubbed "Signs." The ads from Leo Burnett also ran during yesterday's NFL playoff games, and the creative highlighted how McDonald's franchises have used their outdoor signs to acknowledge local and national events including 9/11 and veterans. On social media, people either loved or hated the spot (see tweets below). So, Adweek asked social media vendors Union Metrics and Spredfast to pull some data about the fast-food brand's social reach. From the time that the ad aired on TV yesterday through today at 1 p.m. ET, a total of 6,000 tweets from 5,600 users mentioned McDonald's new campaign, according to Union Metrics. The company estimates that the tweets reached an audience of 9.7 million accounts, totaling 16.3 million impressions. In terms of spikes in chatter, 4 p.m. yesterday was buzziest, generating 2,417 tweets. McDonald's itself didn't tweet about the campaign until 9 p.m. last night (after the ad ran during the Golden Globes), which generated 2.8 million impressions. The brand's tweet also linked to a recently launched Tumblr page that details more of the stories behind the TV campaign. I just cried at a @McDonalds ad. What is this world coming to?! #icrytoomuch — Tracy Ann LaBonville (@glassbouncyball) January 12, 2015 I would like to clarify my earlier tweet - the McDonald's sign ad is really bad. The one with the cartoons is good #hottake #marketing — Chris Knoblock (@cknoblock17) January 11, 2015 Are we far enough removed from 9/11 to use it in an ad to sell bad hamburgers? - @McDonalds Strategy Meeting — Gristle Biscuit (@chipotlemayo) January 11, 2015 Got a bit emotional at the "see the stories behind the signs" ad. Bravo, @LeoBurnett and McDonald's, you just found your voice. — Tom Morton (@tommorton) January 12, 2015 Burger Sentiment Meanwhile, social media vendor Spredfast dug into social data related to sentiment for McDonald's. The findings measure chatter a bit more broadly than Union Metric's data to account for anything related to the burger slinger. In addition to pulling numbers for yesterday, Spredfast also looked at two other time periods to provide some context on how McDonald's typically fares on social media—Jan. 4 (a couple days after the brand-refresh "Archenemies" campaign launched on YouTube) and Dec. 28. A total of 45,792 tweets mentioned Mickey D's yesterday, up from roughly 36,000 on Jan. 4 and 27,000 on Dec. 28. Sentiment about McDonald's across all three measured days is overwhelmingly neutral, but positive feedback did dip slightly with yesterday's ad. Ten percent of tweets were negative compared to 2 percent of positive chatter. On Jan. 4, 8 percent of sentiment was negative compared to 4 percent of positive tweets. And on Dec. 28, 6 percent of tweets mentioning McDonald's were negative compared to 5 percent positive. In terms of cities, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Seattle and Charlotte, N.C., talked the most about the new ad yesterday.

Performance Marketing

McDonald's Brand Sentiment Drops With 'Signs' Campaign, but Not by Much

Social chatter was sizable and relatively neutral

Lauren Johnson

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Lauren Johnson