Returning for her second appearance on the Social Business Engine podcast, Elly Deutch is the featured guest on episode 129. As Global Social Campaign & Advocacy Manager at McDonald’s, Elly provides insight into the expanding role of employee and customer advocacy in McDonald’s marketing strategy.
Elly has been in the digital space for about ten years. She started her career as an intern for the women’s professional soccer team, the Chicago Red Stars. Having limited resources to grow the new team’s presence in Chicago, Elly did a lot of in-person networking that helped to support the team and in turn her personal brand. Two years later she was recruited to a new start-up where she gained experience with CPG brands.
Seeing a gap in the market Elly took a leap of faith and started her own consultancy. It was also around this time that she began speaking at events. She then was recruited to work for Garrett Popcorn, which is where she was at the time of her first appearance on the Social Business Engine Podcast. About a year ago, Elly was recruited by McDonald’s to help build up their digital practice in-house.
Customer & Employee Advocacy at McDonald’s
Today at McDonald’s, Elly works across 120 markets on events and campaigns. Customer and employee advocacy are both important at McDonald’s; you can see this in how they’re putting customers at the center of everything and coming back to one-to-one engagement. Regarding employee advocacy, McDonald’s employees need to be loyal and trustworthy for them to market the brand.
“One interaction can make all the difference.” @EllyDeutch #sbeshow
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McDonald’s made a lot of waves in the industry with their All Day Breakfast campaign creating excitement among fans. Their social media team reached out to people who posted about All Day Breakfast on their social channels. Each “superfan” was sent a package with gift cards, an exclusive All Day Breakfast shirt that wasn’t available for sale and other goodies. They then created the hashtag #alldaybreakfastsquad for those who received the packages to use and continue to promote the campaign.
A sponsor of SXSW in 2015 and 2016, McDonald’s had a lounge and loft at the event this year. Guests could do a virtual reality experience, create their own burger, and listen to live music. To get employees involved with social during SXSW, the digital team trained executives and drafted posts for them to share. Steve Easterbrook, the CEO of McDonald’s, even sent out his own tweets throughout the event.
Steve Easterbrook and the new executive team are driving a culture shift at McDonald’s. The offices are moving from the suburbs to downtown Chicago, and they’re integrating more digital with advocacy. To encourage more employees to use social media, McDonald’s is also finalizing their employee advocacy program that will include restaurant staff as well as corporate employees. Elly’s story goes to show that even an established 60-year-old brand with a global presence can change the way they engage with customers and employees.
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