The strategy was simple: Consumers have questions about McDonald’s food. We have good answers. The only way people would start listening to McDonald’s was if we started by listening to them. Thus, we created “Our Food. Your Questions.” to allow consumers to ask McDonald’s any question they had about the food. Through a call for questions via targeted paid and earned digital media, we expected 5000 questions.

Instead of appealing to ‘Lovers’ – as McDonald’s has historically done - we targeted those who actively questioned the quality and nutritional value of McDonald’s. These “Fencesitters" represent 60% of the total market.

The platform was social by design in that consumers would ask via Facebook/Twitter login, ensuring each and every question was shared instantly. It was a socially sourced FAQ where direct response was used to bring to life to McDonald’s food quality story. Every question received was answered by either text, image or video, that then served a myriad of functions in the social space: a personal connection to the brand, a sign McDonald’s was listening, and as a piece of viral content distributed through social channels to displace the existing inaccurate information on the web.

McDonald’s has long been confident in the quality of its food, its practices and its procedures.

However, consistently low food quality scores and social listening revealed that consumers were not so confident.

With some of the lowest food quality perception scores in its category, and with consumers three times less likely to eat there because of it, the challenge was, quite literally, to change the conversation and improve food quality perception scores by 14 pts before the end of 2014.

To date consumers have responded with over 20,000 questions asked at McDonalds.ca/yourquestions, far exceeding our original target of 5,000. Questions are the fuel for this direct response website, having generated:

• 2million website visits

• 7million questions read

• 4:09 min time on site

Most important, this transparent approach had a direct impact on brand food quality scores: with the top three food quality perception measures improving by 73%, 61% and 48% respectively. In a testament to the power of transparency, McDonald’s saw a 46% increase in the critical metric “company I trust”.