In an unbelievably slow attempt to limit the damages from a “prank” on YouTube, Domino’s Pizza waited almost 48 hours to respond. Now the entire brand has been compromised, not just a single unit.
The videos, four in total were taken down from YouTube but available if you want to make yourself ill at this blog. They feature a guy putting cheese up his nose, wiping a dish cleaning sponge on his backside and generally doing things we have all wondered about or seen in movies.
I remember when Los Angeles KCBS TV station Channel 2 did an expose of dirty restaurant kitchens. All Los Angeles county restaurants’ business fell off a cliff. Did the CMO and the executive team of Domino’s not know this?
The two culprits were fired and arrested on felony charges even though they say it was a “prank.”
After hiring hundreds of employees, I have to tell you – I doubt this was a prank. Both of these employees were in their 30′s and clearly the store was open and orders were coming in. We’ll never know if the food was absolutely never served or not. You can read all about the incident at the NYT site at A Video Prank at Domino’s Damages Its Brand.
The point is much like my post on Monday about Amazonfail, you cannot be in business and think anything will just “calm down,” if you wait it out. Look at last fall when Motrin made a reference to baby harnesses being painful and how quickly moms got on Twitter to complain. They too took too long but that didn’t speak to mom’s fears of food safety.
Did Domino’s not “get” how this could affect all of their franchisees? That young people, the ones most likely to be on YouTube would say, “OMG – you have to see this?” and send to all their friends?
You can see Patrick Doyle, Domino’s President, YouTube response where he oddly looks off camera here.
Short post. Short point. Two employees destroyed a brand. Avoid the Internet at your own peril.
Oh yeah and hiring the right people makes a difference too.
The Yellow Pages was a smart marketing move when it was the sole book from the monopoly of AT&T before it was broken up. The Yellow Pages slogan, “let your fingers do the walking” was brilliant when it came out in 1962.
Authors and bloggers were tagging their posts with the keyword “amazonfail” as they discussed the incident. Much of the outcry started after a publisher, Mark R. Probst, blogged about a message he received from an Amazon representative after noticing that rankings disappeared from “Transgressions” and “False Colors,” two new gay romance books.
Jockey underwear reported this week that, “sales of pink underwear are soaring as men use their undergarments to cheer them up in the economic crisis.” Jockey claims that sales of their colored Y-front briefs have rocketed by an average of 60% over the last six months – and the baby pink pairs have sold more than any other, seeing a 62% boost in sales over the past three months.”
I was in Portand, OR for a presentation with the 
We chatted a bit more about the socks made by 
gh, the gang of three was behind the castle expecting me to approach so they would graciously stop talking, lower the drawbridge and cross the moat to wait on me.
