THE anti-McDonald’s sentiment in Tecoma has gone viral, with social media going crazy after the towns fight with the fast food giant was aired on international news channel CNN.
The story went viral on Twitter, retweeted by thousands around the world.
No Maccas In the Hills spokesman Garry Muratore said it was exciting that the group’s fight had made the world news.
“After last months successful community rally which saw over 3000 hills residents march on Tecoma to say NO to McDonald’s local documentary film-maker Tim Smith put together a video that was shared on YouTube,” he said.
“The video was seen by CNN’s London bureau staff and they contacted our campaign directly with a view to covering the story on their iReport platform.”
The CNN story, which contained links to Smith’s video and to a collection of images from the recent campaign rally and March, was posted by CNN in the early hours of Good Friday.
“We awoke to a very Good Friday indeed,” Mr Muratore said. “With the story being prominent on nearly 80 news sites around the globe.
“We then started to see the story being translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Japanese and Chinese,” he said.
“At one stage on Saturday is was listed as a fast trending story on the US based NewsWhip aggregator site.”
But it was the micro-blog site Twitter that caused the Tecoma story to go viral with well known social activist Priest Father Bob Maguire tweeting the CNN story to his 19,000 followers on Good Friday.
This in turn was re-tweeted by others including film director Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me) and former Tecoma resident Christine Assange (mother of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange).
“We could not believe the Twitter reaction it was re-tweeted by journalists, teachers, actors, chefs, bands, and general Twitter users, by late Easter Monday we estimated at had reached over 10 million followers on the site” Mr Muratore said.
The No McDonald’s in the Hills campaign team had to employ additional volunteers over the break to answer the hundreds of emails of support that had come in to the burgeroff website.
“We had many thousands of hits on our site and our stat’s tell us they had come in from over 100 countries. The common question from most people was how could a community that overwhelming rejected such a proposal find itself battling a corporate bully?
“It’s a valid question to ask,” Mr Muratore said. “Our cause has obviously resonated with an audience well beyond the Dandenong Ranges. McDonald’s now have to realise that their brand is being damaged on a huge scale now.
The Yarra Ranges council said ‘no’, the hills residents have said ‘no’ and now the world is saying ‘no’. I would suggest McDonald’s take time to reconsider what looks like a potential economic and PR disaster for them.”
