Domino's Pizza Dilemma

In the spring of 2009, Domino’s Pizza became the target of a gross video made by two employees at a store in Conover, North Carolina. They filmed them selves doing gross things to the ingredients they were serving to their customers, which they then posted to YouTube. By the next day, the video had gone viral and hit a million views. 

I think Domino’s handed the public relations fallout correctly, by initiating contact with those talking about the video through the social media outlets they were using. It would have been a poor choice for them to have responded through their own website or through print or news media. But they had the right idea addressing consumers concerns and issues directly and through their own blogs, was the right decision. However, Domino’s should have taken the time to listen to every type of discussion about the video. Creating an account on NetVibes.com or a similar social media listening dashboard would have been an easy way for them to keep track of the many different mediums being used to discuss the video.

Besides ignoring the importance of Twitter, I think Domino’s had a good plan for dealing with issue, because giving too much attention to a video before it becomes viral will only elevate the amount of discussion about it. If however, they had seen how the video was blowing up on Twitter then they might have been able to respond to those comments individually and stopped the video from spreading further.

Once they finally did see the importance of Twitter they did exactly what one would hope. They started their own account and started tweeting articles about the incident and responding to customers.

I think that there probably won’t be any long-term impact on the Dominos brand, although people might think twice about who’s delivering their pizza. But in all reality, Domino’s customers will probably forget and let it go. After all, it was only two employees that created the video. So although it looks bad for the company, I would assume that most customers would not hold them responsible.