SANTA MONICA — McDonald’s director of social media Rick Wion has left the iconic company after more than four years and joined a social media consultancy Manifest Social.

Wion parted ways with McDonald’s in August and has since teamed with three fellow social media directors who had recently departed large organizations. The others in the collective are: president Ryon Harms, who was director of social media position at Farmers Insurance until last year; Sonia Fiorenza, former director of digital communications at Gap; and Daria Montijo, former social media manager at Amgen.

“Our [tagline] is ‘we’ve been there before’ because we’ve all worked as social directors at large organizations and have used social for internal and external audiences— and have dealt with the challenges of scale,” says Wion, who is executive director at Manifest Social. 

The consultancy currently doesn’t have a website but exists on LinkedIn with this objective: 

Now we are ON A MISSION to work with digital leaders within organizations, serving you with the kind of specialized knowledge and hard won expertise that can MANIFEST into huge leaps toward your business objectives. We know that social media can have a business impact - we’ve already proven that time and again. We have the battle scars to prove it.

Wion said the consultancy already has a handful of clients, but could not name them at this time.