This is a start-of-year get-together for IT journalists and the vendors who wish to spruik to them. There is also drinking. Allegedly. I’ll be there along with the usual suspects from Sunday 26 February.

The supposed leaked memo from McDonald’s that I wrote about on Saturday is itself a fake.

The memo, which like the original fake by serial prankster David Thorne was posted on Reddit, purported to be an email from McDonald’s Australia’s Corporate Communications Manager Bronwyn Stubbs outlining their response.

Someone also attempted to post the text of the memo as a comment to my original post.

However Stubbs emailed me yesterday to say it’s a forgery.

The Purported McDonald’s Memo that you include as part of the article is based on a piece of internal communication that I sent out to my colleagues, however, it has been doctored and changed in various places. Most particularly the final paragraph regarding David Thorne has been completely made up.

That made-up paragraph read:

According to recent news articles and other information we have been provided, the fabricated letter was created by an Adelaide man named David Thorne. At no time should any member of McDonald’s mention the name David Thorne to any media representative. We have spoken to police and are in the process of filing charges against Thorne. We are also speaking with legal regarding a possible law suit. At no time should any member of McDonald’s contact Mr Thorne or engage in any correspondence with him. Should Mr Thorne contact you in any way please let me know immediately or forward any emails.

This certainly kills our speculation as to why someone at McDonald’s would have leaked this memo — they didn’t.

The question now becomes who posted this fake memo, and why? If we’re talking opportunity and motive, well, anyone on the entire Internet has opportunity. Motive? How about a certain prankster seeking attention for his book?

Bugger. I just linked to it myself.

Another question is how businesses can respond to fakery like this, particularly when it’s a brand which people already love to hate.

Well-known burger-tossers McDonald’s would be pissed off about that fake email tarnishing their reputation, and understandably so. But are they now responding with unethical tactics?

I don’t know. But here’s my little bit of evidence, and maybe The Power of Crowdsourcing [read: "expecting everyone else to do your work for you"] can fill in the gaps.

1. A document purporting to be a leaked internal memo outlining McDonald’s response policy, and claiming they’re taking legal action against prankster David Thorne, was posted on Reddit — which happens to be where Thorne promoted the original fake memo. The account used to post this new memo, the oh-so-revealing 9911882882288, was created at that time and this is their only post. I’ve included the full text of the purported memo below.
2. This morning someone tried to post a comment here which was merely a copy and paste of that same memo. They used a clearly false email address, which is presumably what caused their comment to be tagged as potential spam, and an Apple Mac running Safari sitting on an IP address on the Hutchison 3 mobile network.

This strikes me as rather curious.

Since McDonald’s is the big fast food chain that haters of big fast food chains love to hate, I don’t see that many anonymous bystanders rushing to its defence. Something in my waters says this is more likely to be someone acting on McDonald’s behalf — but that’s just a gut feeling.

And since McDonald’s is a big company, presumably they have a big respectable PR firm too.

So why, therefore, the anonymity?

The Public Relations Institute of Australia’s Code of Ethics talks about “dealing honestly”, which in my books means identifying yourself — although I’ll admit I’m hazy on how the PRIA itself would interpret that.

Has anyone else had someone attempt to post this memo as a comment? Is anyone seeing McDonald’s posting official comments in their own name?

And what do you make of the fact that prankster David Thorne works for a design agency which lists McDonald’s as a client?

Purported McDonald’s Memo

This is the full text of the comment which someone attempted to post on this website earlier today.

Begin forwarded message:

From: Bronwyn Stubbs
Date: 14 October 2009 11:56:45 AM
To: 372 Recipients
Subject: Fabricated letter

Hi All,

As most of you are aware, a fabricated letter (attached) appeared on a US blog about a week ago. I contacted the blog and had them post a confirmation that the letter is fabricated but despite this it went viral and is now circulating via email.

A response was provided to media and customer service and we are currently have an alert on our corporate website which can be viewed here: http://mcdonalds.com.au/#/home/promo2

Should you be contacted by any media representative in regards to the letter, the following text must be used: “The memo in circulation supposedly written by the Proprietor of Frewville McDonald’s in South Australia is a complete fabrication. ‘Robert Trugabe’ is not a McDonald’s Australia employee and never has been. The contents of the letter are also completely fabricated. McDonald’s practices the highest standards of consumer ethics and would never encourage employees to act in a way that undermines our core customer values.”

According to recent news articles and other information we have been provided, the fabricated letter was created by an Adelaide man named David Thorne. At no time should any member of McDonald’s mention the name David Thorne to any media representative. We have spoken to police and are in the process of filing charges against Thorne. We are also speaking with legal regarding a possible law suit. At no time should any member of McDonald’s contact Mr Thorne or engage in any correspondence with him. Should Mr Thorne contact you in any way please let me know immediately or forward any emails.

Please inform all those who should be made aware.

Cheers,

Bron

Bronwyn Stubbs
Corporate Communications Manager
McDonald’s Australia

What do you reckon? Comments please!

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There’s lots and lots of good material to read here, but I don’t want it to dominate my home page so they’re all over the jump.

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