Issues in Crisis Communication - Essay Example

Crisis Communication: Case Study The Crisis A few years ago, Domino’s saw a major crisis. A for Ad Age Blogs, Bob Garfield recounts Domino’s Crisis in an online article. Garfield (2010) notes that on April 2009, an Easter Sunday, two employees of Domino’s who worked in a store based in North Carolina felt bored and figured posting videos of themselves defiling the ingredients of sandwich would be a thrilling experience. The two workers made five videos in total. In one video, one of the workers stuck mozzarella cheese into his nostrils and blew it over the sandwich. Other videos captured similar stomach-turning unsanitary activities of the two workers with the food. The videos were watched by at least 1 million people all over the world until the videos were finally pulled out of the social media almost two days later (Jacques, 2009). Analysis Management’s Response Vice President of Corporate Communications, Tim McIntyre, carried out an analysis of the situation within the first 24 hours of the release of the videos and reached the conclusion that the videos were not a prank. This led to his communication, both externally and internally, with the concerned audience that included but was not limited to the security head, senior management team, and social media people. McIntyre collaborated with GoodAsYou.org, the consumer watchdog organization, that alerted the top management of Domino’s about the videos, that led to the identification of the workers as Michael Setzer and Kristy Hammond. Customer’s requests were started to be responded to by the company on Twitter by Tuesday. Common questions of the customers included whether the videos were released deliberately by the company or if the management was surprised at the release; why the management had not issued an official statement about the videos; and what would the management do about the whole crisis (Jacques, 2009). President of Domino’s Pizza, Patrick Doyle, officially recorded an apology by Wednesday which was uploaded on YouTube. The crisis was captured in case studies and articles by a host of bloggers and journalists over the following many days. This paper provides an analysis of the crisis communication strategies used by Domino’s Pizza after an unfortunate incident it experienced in 2009. Analysis in Light of Public Relations Principles The Arthur W. Page Society is charged with “embracing the highest professional standards; advancing the way communications is understood, practiced and taught; and providing a collegial and dynamic learning environment” (Arthur W. Page Society, 2015a). On its website, the Arthur W. Page Society enlists these principles to guide the actions of public relations practitioners to exemplify its public relations management philosophy; “(1) Tell the truth; (2) Prove it with action; (3) Listen to the customer; (4) Manage for tomorrow; (5) Conduct public relations as if the whole company depends on it; (6) Realize a company’s true character is expressed by its people; and lastly, (7) Remain calm, patient and good-humored (Arthur W. Page Society, 2015b). It is important to note that in this case, the organization of Domino’s Pizza did not voluntarily or purposefully generated the crisis, as the videos were released by two workers internally without the consent or any information of the top management, and also the organization had not witnessed any crisis of the like before. Stakeholder attributions impart the need for an organization to communicatively respond by going through a four-step cycle including observation of events, interpretation of the information for relevance and accuracy, selecting a strategy among a host of alternatives, and finding out a solution (Hale, Dulek, and Hale, 2005). In this case, Patrick Doyle’s decision to make a video apology and upload it on Youtube as a way to mitigate the crisis was triggered by the medium rather than by the customers’ attributions of responsibility to Domino’s Pizza. While Domino’s release of apology on the traditional medium i.e. the Internet was a way of telling the truth to the public about the situation and was in line with the principle of telling the truth as suggested by Arthur W. Page, it was not very effective because the number of people who had originally watched the videos released by the employees far exceeded the number of people that watched the apology video. This led to acceleration of the social media plan implementation by Domino’s which was, till then, in the process of development. Domino’s response strategy was dictated by the social medium through which the crisis had taken place rather than by stakeholder attributions. It resulted in the emergence of Domino’s from the crisis criticized. The most effective way of reducing the impact of crisis generated by social media like it happened in this case is to integrate social media into the strategies of crisis communication and develop strategies to guide the social media dialogue; “Brands that get it right will be the ones that will use the same online tools as their customers” (Schiller, 2007, p. 16). Recommendations In order to deal best with crisis like the one faced by Domino’s, the concerned organization should regularly update its stake on the issue across a variety of social media platforms including Bottlenose and HootSuite. The focus of such organization should be to attract and recruit online users that have high social identity and enduring involvement. Organizations need to use search engine optimization as a means to manage their online reputations. Organizations should keep 24/7 check on their workers to ensure all their activities are captured and tracked. This can be achieved by installing cameras in the workspace. Workers should be made aware of the installation of these cameras to discourage them from making such videos in the first place. One of the major reasons why Domino’s communication crisis became such a big issue was the fact that it took the top management at least two days to pull the videos out from the public platform. In case, such a crisis happens, constant checking and tracking will enable the top management to take the remedial actions in time before the word is spread far and wide. References: Arthur W. Page Society. (2015a). Vision, Mission & Goals. Retrieved from http://www.awpagesociety.com/about/vision-misson-goals/. Arthur W. Page Society. (2015b). The Page Principles. Retrieved from http://www.awpagesociety.com/about/the-page-principles/. Garfield, B. (2010, Jan. 11). Domino’s does itself a disservice by coming clean about its pizza: We like apologies and honesty, but there are limits. Just ask Ford. Ad Age Blogs. Retrieved from http://adage.com/article/ad-review/advertising-domino-s-a-disservice-ads/141393 Hale, J. E., Dulek, R. E., and Hale, D. P. (2005). Crisis response communication challenges: Building theory from qualitative data. Journal of Business Communication, 42(2), 112-134. Jacques, A. (2009, August 17). Domino’s delivers during crisis: The company’s step-by-step response after a vulgar video goes viral. Public Relations Society of America. Retrieved from http://www.prsa.org/Intelligence/TheStrategist/Articles/view/8226/102/Domino_s_delivers_during_crisis_The_company_s_step#.VM3pR2iUd-k. Schiller, M. (2007, March 5). Crisis and the web: How to leverage the Internet when a brand takes a hit. Adweek, 48 (10), 16. Read More