Thursday, April 16th, 2009...10:09 am
Domino’s Pizza Conover, NC Disgusting Behavior:10 Corporate Response: 0
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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.
6 Comments
April 17th, 2009 at 8:39 am
Hi Bob,
One undeniable fact is that Web audiences have been critical of this incident from the time it began to unfold. The YouTube effect was one aspect, but once this hit the Consumerist and tweets started spreading like wildfire, complete with reposts of email exchanges between corporate, workers and the people warning them about the videos, things got out of control at breakneck speed.
At the surface, I don’t think it would have mattered any if the video response was posted an hour after they found out (48hrs too late, as you describe) – judging from the pretty harsh comments it received, audiences were most critical about the autocued manner in which the message was delivered. The tone and strong language that corporate used in voicing their opinions about their employees actions may have had a hand in rising online temperatures.
We see this kind of thing happen with companies that don’t have a social media (brand monitoring) plan or a spokesperson in place who is made easily accessible to Web audiences demands for answers when a crisis occurs. Hard to believe, but even when a few hours or a day passes, the company comes across as slow or uncommunicative.
It is unfortunate, but it sometimes takes a reputation crisis like this for companies to get a social media plan together and stick to it.
Joseph
@RepuMetrix
April 17th, 2009 at 9:21 am
Yeah, this is pretty unbelievable. And the CEO seems like such a nice guy in those stimulus commercials. I’ll think twice before saying ‘double my cheese’.
April 20th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
the longer you keep this in the media’s eyes the more damage it will cause to this store and your company as a whole , I am also in the food service industry and I think its hurting all of us and I also think the only way to get this out of everyones mind is to take it out of out tv’s radios and news…. Good luck from Gastonia NC
April 25th, 2009 at 4:35 am
[...] where “someone” mysteriously removed gay and health titles from Amazon.com. Then Domino’s in Conover, NC with the employees boasting on camera how they put food up various parts of their body and then [...]
May 14th, 2009 at 3:52 am
[...] that to the debacles of Domino’s burying their heads after the YouTube video in NC surfaced, the Popeye’s Chicken franchisees closing after they [...]
January 27th, 2010 at 11:37 am
[...] But wait, it’s not just the Domino’s Pizza company CMO and President saying they’re sorry. How about Jr. and Ramon (the District Manager?)’s video apology to a Twitterer’s tweets about a bad experience. Just amazing to watch a DM in Chicago apologize about Dominoes 223 Lincoln. Domino’s may have still been smarting from their disgusting employees in Conover last year and how their response was anything but mea culpa. If you missed that post, its here. [...]
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