Marketing aces? No. Two nitwits capable of destroying a multimillion-dollar corporation’s hard-earned reputation? Absolutely.

We have written quite a bit about social media lately, and we’ve wanted to start discussing other areas of online marketing for healthcare.

However, the recent PR disaster at Domino’s Pizza (two employees published a prank video of them doing disgusting things to food that was about to be delivered) makes not talking about Web 2.0 difficult to resist, especially since a number of social media were involved in creating the problem…and ironically could have been used to prevent or reduce it.

Almost overnight, customers’ perceptions about Domino’s quality went from positive to negative. What took years, millions of dollars and hundreds (if not thousands) of people to build was destroyed by a five-minute video by two pizza jockeys with a $100 video camera.

It Started with Viral Video…

And the two geniuses (that were both fired and arrested on felony charges) that made the video apparently weren’t aware of two very real traits of online media:

• Once it’s out there, it’s out there—and there’s no turning back.
• If you think it’s not going to spread, that’s when it gets bigger.

The second point is actually a quote from Scott Hoffman in an article about the situation. Although it reflects the negative realities of what can happen to content on the Internet, it also illustrates the amazing (and potentially positive) possibilities of Web 2.0 technologies such as viral video.

…and Was Discovered Too Late…

Reportedly, Domino’s learned of the video from a blogger that contacted them. For a company of any size—but especially one as large at Domino’s—to rely on a relayed message from a blogger is both shocking and inexcusable.

Three things could have easily nipped the video in the bud before it got out of control and caused the damage it did:

• Blog monitoring
• Twitter monitoring
• Google Alerts

Of course, this is not to say they didn’t have at least one of those utilities in place. But if even if they did, they certainly weren’t using them properly or frequently enough.

…and now Twitter and YouTube are Last-Ditch Cleanup Efforts

Although the video was taken down from YouTube, now that the story has become so big, it’s popping up everywhere (including on YouTube) and is now likely to never be fully contained.

Other than waiting for the buzz dies down, all Domino’s can do is to fight back via the same channels. They have since created a Twitter account to respond to concerns and a YouTube video from the CEO. However, the damage is done, and it’s going to take a while to undo it.

Who’s Next?

It’s almost impossible to believe that there aren’t some disgruntled employees at a redundant minimum wage that would love to emulate the Domino’s video, except this time with more malice and intentions for the video to spread.

If and when it does, it is virtually guaranteed that the only way you’ll hear about it is if the victimized company was one that refused to embrace social media and wasn’t engaged enough in the online community to be there when the bomb drops.

AVID Design is at the vanguard of online marketing, including Web 2.0 and social media. If your company doesn’t have a strategy to prevent similar crises, contact us for a free assessment and consultation.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 16th, 2009 at 2:39 pm and is filed under Brand Monitoring, Pop Culture, Social Media, Social Networking, Things 'n' Stuff, Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.