McDonald’s claimed it achieved a 33% increase in foot traffic to its stores during a promotion run with Foursquare earlier this year. Since McDonald’s serves about 26 million customers per day in the United States, that would be one big happy meal for the restaurant.
Unfortunately, it turns out to be a whopper, according to ReadWriteWeb . Here’s the background to the website’s story.
During Foursquare Day, McDonald’s offered folks who used Foursquare to check into the fast food chain a chance to win $5 and $10 gift cards. On the Econsultancy blog, Meghan Keane reported that McDonald’s head of social media Rick Wion claimed that, “with this one little effort [$1000 in gift cards], we were able to get a 33% increase in foot traffic to the stores.”
What really happened is that McDonalds saw a 33% increase in check-ins from the day prior to Foursquare day and a 40% increase in check-ins for the week the special ran. Wion later confirmed that he had misspoken and the increase was in check-ins, not foot traffic. Oops. That ruined one of the most over-hyped social media stories floating on the web.
