McTrust

Today we had a plenary presentation by the President of McDonald's USA.

She talked about how companies (like mine and others there) build brand trust and spoke specifically about their strategy.  It was a tense presentation.  Many of my colleagues were waiting for her to talk about how Super Size Me drove concerns around their brand and potentially deteriorated trust with consumers.  But, she really never brought it up.  In fact, she avoided that all together.


Actually, she made an obvious point to talk about how she eats at McDonalds everyday and is still able to run a marathon.  She also talked about how her three grandchildren eat McDonalds regularly and how proud that makes her.  By the way, this was a very tiny woman.  Extremely petite with not an ounce of fat on her body.


Hmmmm.  Trust.  Seems like an interesting topic for them especially considering all their colleagues were hoping to learn from their experience -- how to rebuild trust in the communities you serve after some unexpected real bad publicity?  This is something all of us worry about regularly.  But, they didn't trust us to talk about it.  Missed opportunity for them because I think they lost even more trust.