Crisis Communications Case Study Domino

Domino

• Two Domino’s employees from a North Carolina store shot a video of themselves doing gross things to the food they were preparing for delivery and posted in on YouTube. How gross was it? Check it out, The Consumerist has the videos.

• The video was posted on YouTube and by Wednesday was seen by more than 500,000 viewers spreading fast on social networks and twitter.

• The employees claim it was just a prank and the food was never sent to the customers. Half a million views later, the damage was already done.

How did the company respond

• Once the company learned about the video from readers of The Consumerist, it responded quickly and targeted audiences that already viewed the video: readers of The Consumerist, twitter users and YouTube users
• Because Domino’s didn’t have a twitter account, it launched one: twitter.com/dpzinfo and encouraged its employees to twitter (They should have had an account already)
• The company showed its outrage through its president’s YouTube response:“It sickens me that the actions of two individuals could impact our great system,” said Doyle. (This is clearly scripted and it would be better if he was looking into the camera, but getting this out quickly is more important than what it looks like)
• Similar outrage was shared via quotes in the media. Domino’s spokesman Tim McIntyre told USA Today: “Any two idiots with a video camera and a dumb idea can damage the reputation of a 50-year-old brand.”
• Domino’s got the videos removed from YouTube, lowering the number of people who will come across it.
• Domino’s tried to explain that this was an isolated incident and used numbers to do that, saying that they have “125,000 hard-working men and women across the nation and in 60 countries around the world”. This was not used as an excuse but it does put things into perspective.
• The employees were fired and the company filed complaints for the arrest of them. Later both were charged with distributing prohibited foods, which is a felony in North Carolina.
• The store was closed and sanitized.
• Domino’s is banning video cameras in the stores. Frederic Lardinois makes an interesting point on ReadWriteWeb: “Domino’s should welcome cameras in its stores, so that customers can see that this was an isolated incident that is not representative of behavior of the thousands of other employees Domino’s and its franchisees have.”
• The following days, Domino’s did not advertise sandwiches shown in the videos, it featured other items instead (according to twitter user @barbaranixon)

Lessons learned

• Monitoring social media is crucial
• Use social media before crisis happens and be ready to respond quickly
• Show sincerity and that it matters to you, use your top executive
• Let your employees express their outrage (e.g. Domino’s asking them to twitter)
• Should you always apologize? Domino’s did, but some (including me) might argue that an apology was not necessary. What do you think?
• Know who you need to respond to and target that audience first!
• Make sure that your other departments are not going ahead with some plans that could make the crisis worse (e.g. advertising for the closed store or having the employees on company materials, etc.)
• Doing too many new things to correct something that is not correctable (there will always be two idiots in 125,000 person company) may shift the blame to you and raise new questions (Why were those rules not in place before? Should I be worried that this was not in isolated incident?)