McDonald’s Big Digital Push Includes Music As A Customer Reward

A series of new hires and job listings for McDonald's Global Digital Team are catching attention as business writers and competitors consider their plans to create an ecommerce platform and offer music as a reward to loyal customers. While most positions are based at McDonald's Oak Brook, Illinois headquarters, the opening for a Product Director, Music and Entertainment may be based in the new San Francisco office McDonald's opened to build stronger ties with the tech community.

CNBC reported on McDonald's recent appointment of Julia Vander Ploeg as their first U.S. VP of Digital. Vander Ploeg was previously at Ticketmaster.

CNBC also describes a series of job postings that Mashable manages to link to that reveal more about what McDonald's is planning.

A listing for a Project Lead, Release Manager: eCommerce Platform describes their ecommerce platform plans:

"As digital consumer engagement models and retail business opportunities evolve, McDonald’s will continue to create an eCommerce Platform that will enable us to reach even more customers and support McDonald's global digital business and technology growth. Our eCommerce Platform will revolutionize how McDonald’s interfaces with our customers by removing physical boundaries to allow our customers to connect to and order McDonald’s any time or place, globally."

"Given McDonald’s scale – 70 million customers served daily across 119 countries – this platform will compete in transaction volumes, performance, and reliability needs with industry-leading eCommerce retailers such as Amazon and eBay. This platform is part of a broader set of applications that will significantly modernize McDonald’s, and is the foundational core, responsible for ensuring each customer’s order reaches the restaurant."

And a listing for Product Director, Music and Entertainment reveals more of their plans for music.

Responsibilities include:

"Create the customer strategy and product roadmap for a variety of digital music and entertainment experiences that McDonald’s will provide to customers"

"Establish multi-channel music and emerging entertainment programs to reward our most enthusiastic customers and drive frequency"

"Leverage music and product management experience with direct-to-consumer companies"

"Evaluate and select vendors and negotiate contracts within the music and entertainment industries"

Minimum Requirements include:

"Minimum 7+ years experience in product management for consumer technology, Internet, digital media or e-commerce"

"Deep knowledge of music licensing practices and digital rights management"

"Significant experience developing and building music and entertainment products"

It should be interesting to see what results unless, of course, this is all just to say you will soon be able to get music and other digital items when you earn loyalty points at McDonald's for buying food-related items.

But it sounds bigger than that and one day we'll know the full details

More:

• Viggle Acquires Choose Digital To Power Digital Media Downloads As Customer Rewards
• So Gracenote and Next Big Sound Are Teaming Up To Help Launch Even More Streaming Music Services?
• Music Sponsorships Top $1.28 Billion In 2013

Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (@fluxresearch) recently launched DanceLand. Send news about music tech startups and services, DIY music biz and music marketing to: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.