McDonald's on blogging

Steve Wilson of McDonald's sat with Chris Shipley for an "open discussion" at BlogOn about how big corporate America is looking at ways to leverage blogging.  I've seen how big companies can struggle with this new world, and judging by Steve's carefully measured comments, McDonald's is struggling as much as anyone with this.

They've spent a lot of time, probably painful strings of meetings upon meetings and hirings and firings, sorting out how to approach the problem of speaking more directly with their community.  Steve merely addressed how the company is learning to communicate with their own staff using blogs.  I'm sure many would argue this is hardly blogging but rather using a new tool to publish press releases.

It's hard to congratulate them for what they've done (or for how little they've actually done), but just by watching how painful it was for Steve to talk publicly about this we all got a glimpse into a cultural battle that must be very frightening for everyone at the company.  McDonald's has a lot to lose, not just scores of high paying corporate jobs but an historical position in the history of capitalism.  They are treading the "open" waters very very cautiously.  

I can't help but feel like these are exactly the types of organizations that will fall even harder when the next generation of consumers discover brands online first.  At some point in the not too distant future, enough corporate PR will have opened up to the idea of transparency that the companies that craft messages will be assumed to be hiding things.  At minimum, they should let their staff blog publicly under some kind of communications policy with a penalty of termination for breaking that policy.

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