#bashtag: McDonald’s social media campaign a #McFail

“Billions and billions bashed,” said 97.3 KIRO FM host Dave Ross. (AP Photo)

A McDonald’s social media marketing campaign has gone viral, but not exactly in the way they wanted.

“They decided to start a twitter hashtag, which is a way of organizing tweets about the same subject on twitter, about these great stories about McDonald’s,” said 97.3 KIRO FM host Luke Burbank, in a discussion of the campaign on The Ross and Burbank Show. “Except of course everyone started talking about how they smelled Type 2 Diabetes in the air, and how the fries don’t degrade if you leave them out for sixth months, etc.”

Here are a sampling of a few tweets with the hashtag #McDstories:

@stormoso #McDStories I had 20 piece McNugets for the first time ever and it made me sick. Lost taste in tongue for days. Nasty chems in that grub.

@KenAKWtheWG i remember when i used to eat fastfood…Sausage McMuffins that taste like armpits #McDStories

The LA Times reports McDonald’s stopped promoting the campaign two hours after launching it. But as twitter users observed, it’s hard to kill a twitter trend.

@geekbeagolfer “We quickly pulled #mcdstories and it was promoted for less than two hours.” Will they learn? You can’t pull a hashtag!

The failed hashtag even spawned a new twitter term #bashtag.

“So instead of a hashtag, it’s a bashtag. That’s when you either start a hashtag just to sort of decry something or you take over someone’s hashtag and make it into a negative, that is a bashtag,” explains Burbank.

Many twitter users conclude “#McDStories was a #McFail.”

McDonald’s social media director said in a statement given to the Times that they’re using the whole thing as a learning experience. “As Twitter continues to evolve its platform and engagement opportunities, we’re learning from our experiences.”

By JAMIE GRISWOLD, MyNorthwest.com Editor