OOPS! McDonald’s Tweets That Its Own Video Is “Bad Information” About Chicken McNuggets

All that work McDonald’s has done to convince people of the quality of its food, gone in a tweet? It’s probably not that bad, but it is embarrassing that McDonald’s called one of its own educational videos “bad information” on Twitter today. Come along for this edition of brand tweet gone bad.

It started on Monday, when the How Things Work Twitter account tweeted an animated GIF of how McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets are made:

This is how chicken nuggets are made http://t.co/lGD2km6KgR

— How Things Work (@ThingsWork) September 1, 2014

The tweet said nothing positive or negative about the process. It just showed ground chicken meat being poured into a hopper, then Chicken McNugget patties coming out. As of today, the tweet was popular — around 650 retweets — but not fantastically so. A tweet from the same account on how chains are made had triple that number.

Still, for whatever reason today — four days after the original tweet — McDonald’s felt it had to respond, saying to How Things Work to “Please stop spreading this bad information about our good food,” as shown below:

@ThingsWork #FALSE Please stop spreading this bad information about our good food. http://t.co/HjD2ULXG8u ^JH

— McDonald’s (@McDonaldsCorp) September 5, 2014

McDonald’s linked to a video produced by McDonald’s Canada, designed to dispel concerns people might have about how McDonald’s food is produced. This is the video, which McDonald’s obviously does consider to be good information:

Unfortunately, McDonald’s failed to realize that the animated GIF that How Things Work originally shared came from McDonald’s own video, as How Things Work tweeted back today to clue McDonald’s in:

.@McDonaldsCorp You just responded with the video from which the GIF was made.

— How Things Work (@ThingsWork) September 5, 2014

Over an hour later, still no response or apology yet back from McDonald’s. The response tweet has about 500 retweets and potentially will go larger than the original one.

Postscript: McDonald’s eventually responded on Twitter:

.@ThingsWork Sure, but isolated scenes don’t tell the full story. http://t.co/HfD7vUJPnB ^JH

— McDonald's (@McDonaldsCorp) September 5, 2014

The company actually responded twice, but deleted its first tweet, apparently after noting that the direct reply to @ThingsWork didn’t include the period in front of the @ symbol that would show the tweet to McDonald’s followers. Even so, the response was met by crickets; in the first 90 minutes the tweet had been favorited twice and had two replies, including this retort:

@McDonaldsCorp @ThingsWork Your video doesn't show the chicken being born, for full story, start there…right? pic.twitter.com/mZbkbx1S6r

— Boost Alpha (@boost321) September 5, 2014

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About The Author

Danny Sullivan

Danny Sullivan is a journalist and analyst who has covered the digital and search marketing space since 1996. He is a cofounder of and advisor to Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, MarTech Today and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech events. conference series. You can learn more about him on his personal site & blog (and he keeps his disclosures page there). He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.