A roller-coaster week for McDonald's

[View Online]( ) Trump and E. coli outbreak make a busy week for McDonald's McDonald's is having some week. First, President Trump served fries at [a staged event over the weekend](, and then the [CDC announced]( that an E. coli outbreak was linked to the brand's quarter pounders, sending stock prices tumbling overnight before a recovery this morning. The below graph shows how the media and public spiked for both news events for the brand over the last four days. As the graph shows, while there was a huge spike in media interest around the E. Coli news, the public interest in those articles has never matched the levels caused by Trump's stint as a fry cook, with more than 755k engagements with the Trump articles overall compared to around 105k for articles about the E. coli links. And the same was true on social media, where the Trump news has orders of magnitude more engagement than the CDC's announcement. That's not to say the E. coli news is getting no engagement at all. One interesting aspect of the coverage is that local Chicago news stations (where McDonald's is based), are seeing significant engagement on TikTok about the outbreak. For example, [ABC 7 Chicago]( (404k) and [NBC 5 Chicago]( (123k) both saw more than 100k engagements with their reporting. From the comms side, McDonald's actually received widespread praise for its comms efforts after it reinforced its stance as a non-political organization, stating "We are not red or blue — we are golden" in an [internal memo](. In the memo, McDonald's leant on its values as having its doors open to everyone. This values-based approach was something we highlighted in our [June report with Wadds Inc](., on how brands should proactively approach polarizing topics. The digital transformation of corporate communications We recently launched our latest report with Wadds Inc. — Intuition vs. Insights: Digital transformation and the corporate communications function. Through in-depth interviews, the report makes the case that the comms function has been slower to digital transformation than other business practices such as sales and marketing, but that the rise of artificial intelligence is now putting pressure on practitioners to accelerate that transition. Here's what you'll discover in the report: - ​​​​​​Best practices for digital transformation from comms leaders across the US and Europe - Steps for solving business problems with comms technology - Guidance on future-proofing the communications function amidst the rise of artificial intelligence You can read the full report [here]( to access all of the insights. NEWSWHIP FOR CROWDTANGLE USERS Learn about how you can continue on the work you were doing in CrowdTangle [Read more]( TOP COVERAGE OF THE VP CANDIDATES JD Vance might have broken through on TikTok [Read blog]( THE INSTAGRAM ELECTION ERA How Taylor Swift boosted Harris on a platform Trump dominates [Read blog]( FREE ELECTIONS DIGEST The US election stories you need to know, delivered straight to your inbox [Sign up]( [Facebook (1).png]( [X (1).png]( [Linkedin (1).png]( Copyright (C) 2024 NewsWhip. All rights reserved. You're receiving this email because you opted in for the NewsWhip blog newsletter and updates. Our mailing address is: NewsWhip 42 Pearse Street Dublin, D02 YX88 Ireland Want to change how you receive these emails? You can [unsubscribe]( )