The list of big brands signing up a head of social media is quickly growing as
McDonald’s names Rick Wion head of social media.

Wion, a former vice president of interactive media at PR firm GolinHarris, has been with McDonald’s for four years and helped establish the fast food giant’s Digital Task Force out of which the @mcdonalds Twitter account came. Not much in the way of followers for such a global brand it currently stands at 22,662.

McDonald’s like its rival Burger King has done much better on Facebook where it has amassed 2,087,663 fans.

He told AdAge that his mission at the fast food giant was three-fold: 1. Use social media to build the business; 2. Manage customer care; and 3. Build up McDonald’s blogger outreach programme to groups like mommy bloggers.

His job remains under the communications team’s remit and he reports to Heather Oldani, who heads up external comms and PR, who says the appointment comes after a year in which McDonald’s has been “devising a dedicated social-media strategy” and “establishing a method of determining ROI”.

It’s time Oldani said to have someone on social media “100% of the time, rather than someone who’s got a day job on top of a day job”.

Wion joins a growing group of professional social media executives in big brands that includes Scott Monty, head of social media at Ford, Frank Eliason at Comcast, Richard Binhammer at Dell, Adam Brown at Coca-Cola and Brad Nelson the former barista who is responsible for Starbucks tweeting.

Of course those guys (and they are mostly guys) are all in the US and it looks like it will be a while yet before we see similar appointments in the UK.