Guillaume Huin elevates McDonald’s social media by thinking like a super fan

“I’m a McDonald’s baby,” declared Guillaume Huin, who joined the Golden Arches as an intern in France in 2010. He arrived in America in February 2020 to lead the chain's U.S. social media team and soon gained additional brand content and engagement responsibilities. The trickiest part about handling social media for such a prominent brand is “you need constantly to think about opportunity and risk with the same love,” said Huin, 36. See all 40 Under 40 honorees here McDonald’s presents its social media as if a McDonald’s super fan is in charge of the content. Recent hits included the retro-style Hi-C pitch deck crowdsourced on Twitter to announce the drink's 2021 return. And while Huin knew that BTS posts would resonate with the band's army of fans, “it blew up more than we thought,” he said. When McDonald’s opted to use only social media and owned media to promote the latest batch of Szechuan sauce—which was available only through the McDonald’s app during its most recent return—the campaign led to one of the chain's biggest days of app downloads and app transactions. View this post on Instagram A post shared by McDonald’s (@mcdonalds) Huin and his team collaborate with Wieden+Kennedy's Bodega, McDonald's lead social agency for evergreen content, as well as Boden, IW and Burrell as the Golden Arches aims to reach a variety of audiences. The “Can I get uhhhhhhhh” commercial that ran just prior to the 2022 Super Bowl was inspired by an October 2020 tweet that played on how people place their orders. can i get uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh— McDonald's (@McDonalds) October 28, 2020 “We always knew that it had potential,” said Huin. If you could have dinner with one person, alive or dead, who would it be and why? Stefan Zweig. He has a way of describing emotions that I haven’t seen from any other author. What are the top two social media sites you use on a regular basis? Twitter and TikTok [and others, the social media director was quick to note]. Being in the U.S. made me love using Twitter. TikTok is like an emotion headquarters. I observe people using it and within five minutes they may laugh, cry, learn something and find something to buy. What’s currently on your bedside reading list? I’m a huge fan of graphic novels and manga. I’m trying to read all of the work designed by Osamu Tezuka and Junji Ito. It’s an underrated art. What was the last show you binge-watched? “The Boys” and I started “House of Dragons”—I’m already obsessed. At what age do you hope to retire? The idea of retiring scares me a bit because I like doing things and being active. I have no idea about when. What I will say is that one of my dreams one day is to be a teacher. I would love to go to a college and teach about social media. See all 40 Under 40 honorees here

Guillaume Huin elevates McDonald’s social media by thinking like a super fan

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