Nov 26th, 2007 | Corporate Blogging, McDonald's, Unsanctioned Employee Blogging | No Comments
People love to share experiences and thoughts with one another and blogging is arguably a very fast, cheap and simple way of doing that. Work is an especially popular subject for many people, partly because we spend so much time working and partly because it entails enough complexities, challenges and noteworthy events for us to describe, decry or inquire about. We especially like to share our joy and grief with others who are in a similar situation. That is one way how a community can come into existence.
However, if you’re a company employing such an ad-hoc community of unsanctioned employee bloggers, you might not be entirely enthusiastic about the whole thing. When the foot soldiers of multinational commerce speak their mind, the result isn’t always carefully-worded, balanced and diplomatic. But you can bet that it’s honest.
An excellent example for such an unofficial blog hub community is McDonald’s Talk, a non-sanctioned employee blog on LiveJournal. It contains gossip, rants, advice, criticism and anything else under the sun that the authors (most of them employed at McDonald’s) find relevant. It has effectively become a virtual water cooler for those toiling under the Golden Arches, with over 300 registered members in the McDonald’s Talk community and dozens of comments under some of the many posts.
While it’s clear that McDonald’s Talk is a place where frustrated employees can vent and disgruntled customers can complain (the slogan on the LiveJournal community account is We love to see (or rather, hear) you gripe) it may come as a surprise to some that there are also quite positive comments, for example about working with friendly colleagues or dressing up for Halloween.
Perhaps the most interesting dimension of the blog is how it very effectively provides information on virtually every aspect of working at a fast food restaurant. Anything from sauce dispensers to what treatment is appropriate for pregnant co-workers is debated and discussed. Interestingly enough, the focus is not really on McDonald’s as a corporate entity, but on those who work there and their every-day concerns.
It seems plausible that the corporate entity is keeping a watchful eye on McDonald’s Talk. Many of the bloggers provide enough information about themselves to allow identification and the site under the verbose banner I’m hatin’ it would probably prove quite vulnerable to a legal attack from the pundits’ employer.
Still, it demonstrates good instinct that the upper echelons of the company have not tried to suppress the blog. Not only is there no way to effectively stop your employees from complaining - ever -, but to gripe in the 21st century means to gripe on the Net, whether legal departments like it or not. Secondly, McDonald’s Talk is quite a lot less of a flamefest than one might assume and fairly little of the criticism is actually directly levelled at the company as such (impossible-to-please customers, annoying co-workers and arcane regulations are another thing). Instead, the blog is a valuable source of insider information and it no doubt plays an important role for the community that is flourishing around it.
How should companies deal with unauthorized blogs? Most importantly, they should be aware of their existence. Watch, observe and learn should be the motto - as I assume McDonald’s is doing. After all, the company has shown to value blogs as part of its communications strategy before.
More on McD Talk at Foodfacts and The Employee Factor.
May 9th, 2007 | Corporate Blogging, Linguistics, McDonald's, Style, Visualization | 1 Comment
Thought it was time to share a few blog-related statistics with you once again. I’ve looked at three different things in McDonald’s Open for Discussion blog using my corporate blogging corpus.
a) f-score (for details on what that is, read this post)
b) most frequent nouns
c) collocates of the noun PACKAGING
For visualizing f-scores and noun frequencies I’ve once again used IBM’s nifty Many Eyes tool. Have a look.
For the third step (collocates) I’ve used what’s called a concordancer in linguistics to look at the contexts where the noun PACKAGING is typically used.
Concordance for PACKAGING
1. Designing Packaging With the Environment in Mind in Open for Discussion
asked how we address sustainability issues in designing our packaging. I’m happy to jump on this question because we’ve b
2. Designing Packaging With the Environment in Mind in Open for Discussion
at McDonald’s as the manager for initiatives to reduce our packaging impacts. The short answer is that we study the pote
3. Designing Packaging With the Environment in Mind in Open for Discussion
hat we study the potential environmental impacts of any new packaging design. We work hard to ensure that our packaging w
4. Designing Packaging With the Environment in Mind in Open for Discussion
f any new packaging design. We work hard to ensure that our packaging will be environmentally responsible while also meet
5. Designing Packaging With the Environment in Mind in Open for Discussion
onable cost. Our main environmental priorities for consumer packaging include:- Minimizing use of materials. - Favoring m
6. Designing Packaging With the Environment in Mind in Open for Discussion
ls made from renewable resources, like wood fiber. - Having packaging that can be recycled or composted. - Incorporating
7. Designing Packaging With the Environment in Mind in Open for Discussion
ckage was featured awhile ago, as an example of sustainable packaging, in a trade magazine called packaging World. I wi
8. Designing Packaging With the Environment in Mind in Open for Discussion
mple of sustainable packaging, in a trade magazine called packaging World. I wish I could take you back to the late 198
9. Designing Packaging With the Environment in Mind in Open for Discussion
d take you back to the late 1980’s so you could compare our packaging then to what it is today. There are big differences
10. Designing Packaging With the Environment in Mind in Open for Discussion
ese solutions–and many others–by working with our primary packaging supplier and Environmental Defense. At the end of
11. Designing Packaging With the Environment in Mind in Open for Discussion
the 1990’s, we calculated the results of our collaborative packaging efforts. They showed that we’d eliminated 300 milli
12. Designing Packaging With the Environment in Mind in Open for Discussion
rts. They showed that we’d eliminated 300 million pounds of packaging during the decade. And that was in the U. S. alone.
13. Designing Packaging With the Environment in Mind in Open for Discussion
next time you eat at McDonald’s, take a closer look at our packaging. And let me know what further questions you have. -
14. Saving the Earth and Saving Money in Open for Discussion
he decade, we’d eliminated a total of 300 million pounds of packaging. And it didn’t cost us a penny. We also worked with
15. Greening Our Supply Chain in Open for Discussion
out our sustainable fisheries program and our work with our packaging supplier. Let me tell you about another initiative-
16. Engaging in the Global Obesity Dialogue in Open for Discussion
rant chain to begin providing nutrition information on food packaging. We are using a simple icon-based format because we
17. We Want You… To Critique Our Worldwide Corporate Responsibility Report in Open for Discussion
ompany?- Limited consumer interest?- Limited technologies - packaging…- Established food production systems - price set
18. We Want You… To Critique Our Worldwide Corporate Responsibility Report in Open for Discussion
know more about your plans for new nutrition information on packaging to be in 20, 000 retaurants worldwide by end of 200
19. Spinning Green in Open for Discussion
me period, McD USA spent more than $1/2 billion on recycled packaging With a leading environmental organization’s help, ou
= 19 matches in 6 blog posts for your query
I’ll omit a detailed commentary this time, just take this as a sort of text-statistical doodle. Oh and I picked OFD for no particular reason - the blog just happened to pop up in my records.
Dec 11th, 2006 | Corporate Blogging, Cox Communications, Definitions, GE, McDonald's, Microsoft, Novell, Wells Fargo | 8 Comments
Here’s a list of explanations of the term blog, taken from seven different corporate sites:
Blogs are Web pages which are updated frequently, written from the point of view of an individual, written in an informal tone, and usually expose (sic) an RSS feed for syndication.
from: Microsoft Community Blogs
While we provide a Cox point of view, we also shoot for a balanced discussion that’s light on bull and heavy on substance. We air third-party commentary and even views from those who just might disagree with us.
from: DigitalStraightTalk (Cox)
We live in a constantly changing world where the issues are complex and solutions anything but simple. With such complex issues, we may not always agree on the root causes or best solutions, but we can have a conversation.
from: Open for Discussion (McDonald’s)
We hope that, through this blog, understanding the trials and successes that communities have experienced in natural disasters will propel you to develop your plans for disaster preparedness.
from: Guided by History (Wells Fargo)
From Edison’s Desk [..] offers a unique forum for technology enthusiasts around the globe to discuss the future of technology with top researchers from one of the world’s largest and most diverse industrial research labs.
from: From Edison’s Desk (GE)
Novell Open PR gives Novell watchers information about what’s happening in the company that might not make the cut for a press release, but is still of interest to the market and Novell’s customers.
from: Novell Open PR (Novell)
A blog (short for web log) is a web site containing dated entries. Think of it like an online journal. Blogs are usually written in the first person by an individual or group of folks, and they update regularly, sometimes every day. There are many different kinds of blogs […].
from: Earthling (Earthlink)
I’ve collected this little round-up of quotes to show that there is hardly a consistant view of what a blog is or does in the corporate world (not that there was any reason to assume otherwise).
The definition to fall back on is the strictly formal-technical one: blogging is a form of web-based publishing and blogs are websites (or parts of websites) which are managed via a specialized content-mangement software. They usually consist of entries displayed on the main page in reverse chronological order and usually have an archive of older entries. Beyond that - i.e. when thinking about the possible functions of blogs - things get a lot more complicated.
The reason for the high degree of variation is that the blogs listed above serve a variety of purposes, and each applies its own “blogging philosophy” to the explanation given. At the same time, I think it’s safe to assume that the blogging practices of those companies are also shaped by what they believe (”good” / “real” / “correct” etc) blogging to be. Let’s look at a few definitions.
Microsoft lists four aspects, one formal (post frequency), one technical (”exposing” RSS feeds) and two stylistic ones (point of view and informal tone). The technical ones aren’t entirely unproblematic. Is it not a blog if I post infrequently? Is every source which provides - sorry, exposes - an RSS feed a blog? But these things are commonly cited because stylistic aspects are even harder to nail down. “Informality” is very much in the eye of the beholder (see here for one end of the scale, here for the other). College professors, teenagers, CEOs and housewives all have their own understanding of what informal language looks (or sounds) like. And what about personal point of view? It seems to apply to most blogs, but there are counter-examples. For example, the Thomson Holiday Blog currently has a word count of several thousand strings in my database, with a mere four instances of the personal pronoun “I”. It is also posted anonymously (as are many product blogs) and comments are quite scarce.
Cox completely omits formal aspects and highlights content instead, committing itself to “substance” and a “balanced discussion” which is contrasted with “bull”. The discursive quality of blogs - different parties expressing controversial opinions - is marked here as the most important characteristic of the blog. The almost complete lack of comments in Digital Straight Talk speaks a somewhat different language. Cox seems to be experimenting with a sort of talk-radio approach to blogging, especially when smacking about its favorite competitor.
McDonald’s similarly highlights discussion (or - subtly toning it down - conversation). The Open for Discussion blog is a part of the company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy. It is authored by the senior director for CSR, Bob Langert, and his staff. Open for Discussion is interesting because it presents the example of a much-criticized company walking on a sort of public relations blogging tightrope. Langert responds to comments quite frequently - a practice which is absolutely not the norm, especially in a blog that is so clearly image-related. Many of the comments are highly critical of McDonald’s’ business practices and accuse the company of using the CSR initiative purely for cosmetic effect (see this exchange). The challenge to Langert and Co. is to be as diplomatic as possible, while never being too drastic in the acknowledgment of possible mistakes. The discursive practice and McDonald’s’ openness in engaging in it with the public takes precedence over the issues, because the issues remain controversial (”we may not agree […] but we can have a discussion”). That is not to say that the company isn’t serious about the CSR program, but showing McDonald’s’ ability to accept criticism without admitting defeat seems to be the key function of the Open for Discussion.
Wells Fargo and GE don’t care too much about the ontological status of blogs but get right down to business. Guided by History (Wells Fargo) relates the stories of natural disasters to remind us to get insurance… why not from Wells Fargo? Similarly, GE’s focus is on research on the topical level, but on the functional level From Edison’s Desk is about image and possibly recruiting. Both are innovative strategies in my opinion, and they contradict the idea that some kind of constant visible interaction with a community (e.g. via comments) is always an equally vital measure of blog success. GE doesn’t need to appeal to just everybody: what counts is that junior researchers and tech journalists will see the blog as an indicator of the company’s innovativeness.
Novell makes an interesting qualitative distinction when announcing to blog things that might not make the cut for a press release. Press releases are given the “official” and “universally relevant” stamps, whereas blog entries are characterized as containing more general-purpose, less essential information. This hierarchy of relevance is hardly surprising, considering that press releases are an entrenched form of text while blogs are still young. Question is, of course, why the two are regarded as separate concepts at all, especially when assuming the former to be a kind of text and the latter to be a mode of publishing? Why not blog press releases? What about the technology of a blogging software makes it necessary to write differently or present different information than you would with a PM?
Alright, I’ve decided to stick the rest of this round-up into another post because, as usual, I’m far from done. Yeah, so much for writing shorter entries 
Nov 20th, 2006 | Corporate Blogging, Dell, McDonald's | 3 Comments
I think my greatest weakness in conjunction with blogging is probably writing pieces of epic proportions, instead of breaking down issues into smaller units. But alas, I promise to work on that and I’ll start with this post.
John Cass shares his thoughts regarding transparency and the blogger-reader relationship and points to a very interesting interview he recently conducted with a reader of Tim Jackson’s Masi Guy blog (Masi is a famous bicycle brand -just in case, like me, you’re not a cycling afficinado).
I’d like to quote a few of John’s insights here because I think he’s dead on:
If a company dares to be transparent, and even conduct self constructive-criticism in public, there are definite benefits to be gained. The success in blogging with Microsoft comes in part from being to talk about issues and problems warts and all.
Absolutely, and I think the level of participation in blogs such as McDonald’s Open for Discussion and Dell’s Direct2Dell is directly related to how they react to criticism. They are being held to the same standards you’d hold another person. Does X listen to me? Is he receptive to arguments? Can he deal with criticism or does he ignore it? Failing to perform favorably in this context has serious implications.
Scoble is special is this regard because it’s actually him voicing the criticism, instead of leaving that purely to the readers. By pre-empting criticism he has established himself as an unbiased and trustworthy expert. That kind of role is only open to those who have a special place in the corporate hierarchy, however. A CEO can probably not afford the same degree of candor - at least not without stepping on a few toes. But having an autonomous “evangelist” blogger in addition to other blogs authored by executives and subject-matter experts has numerous advantages anyway. Readers are more likely to accept criticism when it’s coming from someone who isn’t at the top of the company ladder and a diversity of perpectives is a good thing.
Masi Guy is an excellent example for the dynamicity of an open exchange among enthusiasts. A brand is what happens in people’s heads when they think about a company or product. If you read the Masi blog, you get a dynamic and evolving understanding of the Masi brand, that is, who builds these bikes, who buys them and what makes them special.
We don’t know if the relationship between the reader and the blogger has little effect on the relationship between customers and the company. To answer that question we’d have to ask the customer, or find some way to measure blog readers’ actions and compare the reader’s perception of the relationship they have with the blogger.
Precisely. Determining what readers think of a blogger and then examining whether or not a positive impression benefits the company is a difficult yet crucial task. Blogging is mostly a soft return activity, but that doesn’t mean we can’t (eventually) find a way of better describing its effects.
Once again, thanks for weighing in John!
Sep 26th, 2006 | Corporate Blogging, Cox Communications, Dell, GE, McDonald's, PR | No Comments
Today’s dish consists of four special ingredients:
a) a Happy Meal, only complete with the plastic replica of a controversial vehicle
b) an exploding laptop
c) a talking lightbulb
d) cable TV with an attitude
I’m taking a closer look at four sources that I have classified as image blogs (see one,two). My assumption is that the main purpose of these blogs is to influence the public perception of a company in ways which are only tangentially related to the goal of increasing sales.
Let’s look at the examples one by one.
Digital Straight Talk (Cox Communications)
While we provide a Cox point of view, we also shoot for a balanced discussion that’s light on bull and heavy on substance. We air third-party commentary and even views from those who just might disagree with us.
(from http://www.digitalstraighttalk.com/about/)
Cox’ “light on bull, heavy on substance” mantra mirrors the attitude the company seeks to convey: “direct”, “no-nonsense”, “opinionated”. And yes, that does sound like talk radio. It’s an interesting approach for an image blog; what could be called the offensive strategy (Wal-Mart is similar), as contrasted with the more defensive style of Dell and McDonald’s. A look at several posts (one, two, three) rather contradicts the claim that Cox “airs (sic) third-party commentary”, unless you count citing negative studies on cable and their refutation by Cox as commentary. As is often the case with product blogs, there is hardly a discussion taking place (in fact, I could not find any comments on the Cox blog so far). Digital Straight Talk is very much devised as a public relations megaphone, focused on loudly articulating a positive view of Cox and of cable in general and a negative view of the telecom companies and other competitors. It’s very much a one-way street in terms of who communicates.
From Edison’s Desk (GE)
From Edison’s Desk […] offers a unique forum for technology enthusiasts around the globe to discuss the future of technology with top researchers from one of the world’s largest and most diverse industrial research labs.
GE’s main corporate blog presents the company’s research efforts in a number of areas (energy, transportation, computing) to a scientifically inclined audience. The researchers who collaboratively write the blog frequently use images and charts along with references to published academic papers in their posts. Comments are quite frequent and sometimes seem to come from members of other departments at GE, which supports the impression that the blog is not purely aimed at consumers or the general public, but also used as a means of communicating internally. Since the interest-group targeted is quite specific (people with a solid background in science or engineering) the blog is also a useful tool for recruiting.
Direct2Dell (Dell)
While Dell’s new blog also serves multiple purposes, it appears to be most popular as a place for disgruntled customers to vent and consequently for Dell’s CRM team to plead for forgiveness and promise betterment. While recent posts on Linux, diagnostics and the importance of e-mail have not garnered a lot of feedback, a 10-questions entry on Dell’s new XPS700 gamer PC line and the chain of mishaps associated with it has to date produced the incredible number of 272 comments, some of which are scathing. However, due to the inclusion of open criticism the conversation is largely perceived as “real” and “honest” and a substantial number of customers gives Dell good grades for their approach to “customer service via blog” (not to be confused with the grades they receive for their handling of the XPS700 issue). The 10-questions post is also an interesting example for “crisis management via blog”.
Open for Discussion (McDonald’s)
McDonald’s is unlikely to complain about a lack of feedback either, though as with Dell it’s not all love and appreciation in their corner of the blogosphere. VP Bob Langert provides an interesting description of his strategy:
The important thing is that we listen to–and respect–one another’s viewpoints. That’s the mission of this blog. To be frank, I’ve been hoping for more comments, more dialogue. This Hummer issue has definitely stirred things up. And I think that’s good.
The reasoning here is that the authenticity of a real conversation between McDonald’s and its critics positively outweighs any damaging effects the criticism itself might have. Someone who is completely uncritical of McDonald’s is not likely to even read the blog, and if he does it is highly unlikely that reading critical comments will have any negative effect. Conversely, those who are critical of McDonald’s can still be influenced - not necessarily by a change of behavior, but possibly by changing how the company communicates with skeptics.
Each of these four examples shows a slightly different approach to blogging:
1. Use your blog to tell you customers what’s going on, directly, without a middle man.
2. Use your blog as a talking showroom of your research, and to communicate internally.
3. Use your blog to bring controversial issues to your own doorstep. Participating in the discussion is in itself a means of influencing the discussion.
Note that all three approaches depend on involving the readership. The fourth option would be use your blog as a megaphone (as Cox is doing it), but I’m doubtful whether that is really a adequate application for a blog. The problem is that the credibility attached to blogs is related to their ability to function as discussions - if you’re not talking to anyone in particular and there are no voices other than your own, this discursive dynamism is taken away. I figure out who you are by watching how you respond to others. If you’re not responding to anyone but instead holding a monologue, that tells me preciously little about who you are. In the worst case, I’ll come to the conclusion that you’re either unwilling to listen or incapable of responding (see one of the comments on Langert’s post where he’s criticized for not reacting to questions).
Blogs posses an unparalleled degree of flexibility that other channels of communication available to companies lack. Issue a press release and you’re talking to a middleman, not to your customers. Produce an ad and you have no back channel and no chance to act in a social context, which would allow you to build trust. Place a job ad and engage in an extremely formal and highly asymmetrical exchange with potential candidates, an exchange that is largely about meeting requirements and allows for very little conversation, at least initially. However, this versatility goes hand in hand with a certain lack of predictability related to the participatory nature of blogs. The result of a discussion cannot be a “clear message”, but arguably a discussion can be much more persuasive and powerful than a lone voice, especially when that voice isn’t talking to anyone in particular.
