One picture disclosed McDonalds

I have talked about the best PR pictures, which can circulate through media channels and help to obtain the objectives of organization. When pictures are well planned and made by professionals, the only question is "if the picture would be published and reach the publicity?". 

However, PR agencies cannot control the pictures that are shot by photojournalists or each social media participant. Recently the social media has experienced huge explosion in media system. That follows, that everyone can spread pictures trough media channels. Blogging, social networks make information flows unexpectedly intensive. Especially pictures can easily steam on the Internet. And the virtual environment can be said to be the perfect place for unplanned and undesirable information spread.

McDonalds last year has experienced that one picture can easily destroy the image. What is more, this anti PR example shows that visual language is more effective than textual. If the words can lie, the picture stucks in memory and is supposed to be truth.


One of the worst PR story of 2010 started when this picture was published on the Internet.

The fillings of a chicken nugget

What seems to be cream, or strawberry ice-cream, actually is chicken nuggets. This pink sludge pretends to be chicken meat!  That picture quickly spread through many sites and Internet channels. Hot discussions about the McDonalds food components started. As it was written in Joe Weber article on Internet news portal, many chicken nuggets contain less than 50% meat leaving the majority of the nugget to be comprised of skin and carcass. 

"Mechanically recovered meat is a process by which the carcass is pushed through a giant tea-bag like screen which produces a slurry of protein which is then bound back together with other proteins, polyphosphates, and gums". 

This picture chocked many people, that had loved McDonalds food. Of course, many of them believed, that fast food is healthy. However, the visualisation of the components of chicken nuggets was something unexpectable.


What is more, this picture has encouraged other actions of New York photographer Sally Davies, who decided to photograph "Happy Meal"  every day for six months as an art project. After that he discovered that the Happy Meal looked exactly the same six months later. This experiment also attracted much attention of media, it even appeared on YouTube. 


This video started the discussions if this food can grow mold. Apparently, McDonald’s issued a statement claiming: “No preservatives are added to the beef patties in McDonald’s hamburgers.” However, finally,  the City of San Francisco banned Happy Meals. This denial and uncertainty claims showed that McDonalds probably took worst PR beating in 2010.