Domino's Pizza Media Crisis - Research Paper Example

Domino’s Pizza Media Crisis Incident: On 13 April, 2009, the world famous pizza chain, Domino’spizza was plunged into a social media crisis when some of their employees posted a food tampering video on YouTube. The video showed two domino’s employees committing health care violations, once this video was posted on YouTube; it went viral within the span of a few minutes. The male employee in the video was seen inserting cheese into his nose and spreading pepperoni over his bodies, by over 1 million people and the video was posted and blogged about on various social networking websites. The women holding the camera spoke the following vulgar words while filming the video: “We all have our secret ingredient....and in about five minutes they will be sent out on delivery where somebody will be eating these. Yes, eating em. And little did they know that cheese was in his nose and that there was some lethal gas that ended up on their salami. Now, that’s how we roll at Domino’s.” (Actual words of Kristie Hammonds). (Jacques 2009). What made matters worse was that both employees, the female holding the camera and the man performing various disgusting acts of contamination with the food, were in Domino’s uniform. The video was shot during working hours and the female employee repeatedly claimed that the contaminated food would soon reach innocent, unsuspecting customers. There were a total of five videos uploaded on YouTube by Kristie Hammond and they went viral within the span of a few minutes. One of the video was of 2.26 minutes duration and was named Domino’s Pizzas Special Ingredients, and showed Michael Setzer passing gas on salami and sticking pieces of cheese up his nose before inserting them into a sandwich. Meanwhile, Kristie joked consistently and claimed that food contamination occurs daily at Domino’s. The other videos were titled Sneeze Sticks, Poopie Dishes and Domino’s Pizza Burger. One of the videos also showed the name of the customer to which Kristie narrates, that the contaminated food would be delivered to. Later, the employees stated that the videos were a prank and none of the food they delivered was actually tempered with. However, the damage was done and the video was much talked about and many online conversations on Facebook and Twitter made it the foci of their attention and this was the primary reason why the issue became a social media crisis. By April 15, the first page offered on Google search for ‘Dominos’ contained at least five out of twelve references of the food tampering video on YouTube. (Jacques 2009). Objectives: For the first 24 hours, Domino’s executives did nothing in the hope that the issue would resolve by itself. However, when this did not happen, the executives were forced into action. The first objective in reversing the damage done to their Company was the identification and the subsequent dismissing of the two employees, Kristie Hammonds and Michael Setzer. The second objective was to contact the local authorities and issue a warrant for their arrest. The third objective was the removal of the food tampering video from YouTube and to contact the consumerist and goodasyou.org, two popular blog sites. The fourth objective was to call the local health department for the inspection of N.C. Domino’s store, where the video was filmed. The fifth objective was the issuance of a formal press release and the creation of an account on Twitter to issue responses to online conversations and to dedicate time in reassuring customers about the fact that this was an isolated incidence and strict safety and cleanliness measures were followed at all Domino’s stores. The sixth objective was to launch an apology video on YouTube featuring the President of Domino’s. (Jaffe 2010). Programming: On 13 April, Domino’s headquarters was alerted for the first time about the disturbing videos posted on YouTube. The first person at Domino’s to learn about the videos on was the company’s VP of Corporate Communications, Tim McIntyre. He received an email on Monday, after an Easter weekend, which informed him of the videos. McIntyre was fully aware of the fact that Domino’s most prized possession was the trust of its customers and to prevent further damage being done to it, he decided that the issue needs to be resolved quickly and quietly. When McIntyre was asked about his initial response, he answered in the following words: “My first reaction when I saw it was anger. I was angry because I love this place, I love this brand, I love the franchises that I work with. I took it personally and we channeled anger into action.” (Jacques 2009). The company officials used the references provided by the readers of the Consumerist in order to indentify the store where the video was filmed. Once the store was identified to be the one in North Caroline, the officials responded by identifying the employees in the video and immediately dismissed them and contacted the local authorities to issue a warrant for their arrest. The director and narrator of the videos, Kristie Hammond, who is a registered sex offender and the actor, Michael Setzer were charged with deliberately contaminating food that was later delivered to the customers. The company also contacted the consumerist and the most important audiences i.e. the public through Twitter. The headquarters refrained from approaching the crisis aggressively, as they did not want the issue to be in more limelight than it was already in. The domino’s executives even refrained from issuing a press release to the media, because they believed that it would cause more harm to the reputation of their Company. However, their silence proved to be more disastrous and resulted in adding more fuel to the fire rather than eliminating the problem. The Company officials tried to remove the videos from YouTube but this was not possible, as they were not the owners of the videos. YouTube informed Domino’s that a signed statement from one of the two employees in the videos were mandatory in order to remove them. The first official response from Domino’s was offered to the public, 48 hours after the videos were uploaded. The Company created @dpzinfo account on Twitter to reassure their customers about the cleanliness procedures followed at Domino’s. Moreover, the Company uploaded an apology video on YouTube featuring Patrick Doyle, the President of Domino’s, in an attempt to regain the trust of their customers. Furthermore, on 14 April, Domino’s called the local department of health to inspect the N.C Domino’s store. On 15 April, the videos of food tampering were removed from YouTube and the Domino’s created an official account on Twitter to deal with online conversations about cleanliness doubts about Domino’s. On 15 April, a spokesperson for Domino’s issued the following statement to The New York Times: “We got blindsided by two idiots with a video camera and an awful idea. Even people who’ve been with us as loyal customers for 10, 15, 20 years, people are side guessing their relationship with Domino’s, and that’s not fair” (The New York Times, 15 April 2009). Evaluations: Most brand experts and media crisis handling authorities believe that the situation would not have worsened had the company shown immediate response, despite this they believe that Domino’s did a perfect job in handling the situation. The company did not realize the power of video pass along and this was the primary reason for the major part of damage inflicted on the company’s reputation. Regardless of the company’s response, the fact remains the same that handling an unprecedented crisis always involves mistakes and delays. Despite this, Domino’s followed the chief principles to be employed while dealing with social media crisis. The principles to be followed in handling a social media crisis are not different from those employed when handling other classes of crisis because merely changing the vehicle of communication does not change the principles significantly. The company was able to recognize the store and identify and dismiss the employees in a short span of time, mirrors the fact that Domino’s was well aware of the inner workings and activities of the organization. Furthermore, Domino’s did not launch an online team during the course of the crisis, but they already had a digital team ready to launch online services. This proved immensely beneficial and greatly accelerated the process of regaining customer trust after the incident was completely dealt with. Moreover, the company had an official spokesperson to deal with media issues but they chose to feature the USA president of Domino’s in the apology video posted by Domino’s on YouTube. On the other hand, Domino’s did a great job of tracking down communication records of North Carolina store to ensure that the tempered food shown in the videos was not delivered to customers. Another strategy that worked remarkably well was the deliverance of an apology email to the customers who offered positive feedback in the past. Wikipedia also addressed the issue and Domino’s shortly sent a Wiki reply and this act also worked to ease the process of brand name recovery. Another strategy that worked in the favor of Domino’s was their apology video being titled Disgusting Domino’s People-Domino’s responds, which ensured that it was displayed on search engines when the Prank videos were searched. (Scott 2011). I believe that the most effective response in dealing with the social media crisis was the launching of online apology video on YouTube because it was quite necessary to use the same website for communication with the audience, through which the crisis was initially mediated. What actually didn’t work was the fact that Domino’s took too long to respond to the crisis, the situation would have benefitted tremendously, if the company would have realized sooner that the issue was not going to subside by itself. Apart from delay shown in responding to the situation, another factor that proved to be an obstacle for Domino’s at the time of crisis, was the lack of social media strategy. Therefore, Domino’s wasn’t actually well aware of the strategies to employ when using online channels as a source of communication during a crisis. The situation would never have worsened had the company established a digital team to monitor online conversations on popular social networking websites, in an effort to address issues at an initial stage before they get the chance to turn into a social media crisis. On the other hand, the removal of the videos from YouTube was a smart act but it didn’t work so well because copies of the videos are still available on the Web. The Company would have been better adapted to deal with media crisis if it had a blog on its official website. (Jordan-Meier 2011). Tim McIntyre states that Domino’s has been toying with the idea of a blog even before its social media crisis surfaced and he claims that the company has yet to formulate the strategy through which the blog will be launched. McIntyre claims that the only reason why Domino’s emerged relatively unscathed from the crisis was the extreme loyalty and trust of its customers. (Hennig-Thurau et al 2010). References: Jacques, Amy. "Domino's Delivers During Crisis: the Company's Step-by-Step Response After a Vulgar Video Goes Viral." The Public Relations Strategist. 15.3 (2009): 6. Print. Hennig-Thurau, Thorsten, Edward Malthouse, Christian Friege, Sonja Gensler, Lara Lobschat, Arvind Rangaswamy, and Bernd Skiera. "The Impact of New Media on Customer Relationships." Journal of Service Research. 13.3 (2010): 311-330. Print. Jaffe, Joseph. Flip the Funnel: How to Use Existing Customers to Gain New Ones. Hoboken, N.J: Wiley, 2010. Print. Jordan-Meier, Jane. The Four Stages of Highly Effective Crisis Management: How to Manage the Media in the Digital Age. Boca Raton. FL: CRC Press, 2011. Print. Scott, David M. Real-time Marketing & Pr: How to Instantly Engage Your Market, Connect with Customers, and Create Products That Grow Your Business Now. Hoboken, N.J: Wiley, 2011. Print. Read More