With more than a million owner-operators, franchises, corporate staff, and employees worldwide, McDonald’s knows that the value and impact of what takes place at its biannual Worldwide Convention needs to reach far beyond the walls of the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando. New this year, the company used an interactive website to engage both attendees and non-attendees starting months before the actual convention, which was held April 28 to May 1, 2014.
The effort began in January with the launch of the convention website on the company’s intranet. In past years the site had focused strictly on logistical information, but this year the company created an interactive news feed, similar to Facebook’s, where it shared previews of event content, facts about the convention, and insights from senior leadership; it also invited users to comment and “like” posts.
“It was a more digestible news-bite-type format rather than heavy reading. It’s categorized into topic areas, and you can search and filter by topic,” said Lisa Fingerhut, McDonald’s engagement project manager. The website also offered live-streaming of the event’s four general sessions and on-demand access of the programs by the end of each day. To date, the site has garnered more than 37,000 unique visitors and 410,000 individual page views. About 15,000 people from 119 countries attended the physical event.
Previous: #12 National Restaurant Association Show
Next: #14 Aspen Ideas Festival
