Don't Let Social Media Knock You Down Like Domino's (Pizza)

  

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By now I am sure the story of the (now former) Domino's Pizza employees has made the rounds of the water cooler, so I won't go into any more detail than to say it involved two Domino's employees who were old enough to know better, a video camera, a Domino's food prep area, and YouTube.

This story is a perfect example of why every business needs to find a way to monitor the social media for reputation control. People's trust of Domino's pizza preparation service has practically reached negative numbers. Domino's knew nothing about the YouTube video until an employee caught wind of it on a blog.

They quickly opened a Twitter account and persuaded YoutTube to take down the video to try to contain the damage but it was too late. Copies of the video had already been made and were circulating outside YouTube.

Now, the employees have been fired and have had warrants sworn out for their arrest. Domino's has released its own YouTube video. But nothing they do will erase what has already been seen. They face a tough recovery.

If they had been monitoring the social media and discovered the video earlier, would it have made a difference? Hard to tell, but it is possible they could have gotten ahead of the curve and repudiated the video before it became so (in)famous. Maybe they could have gotten a whole campaign arranged.

But Domino's did not monitor the social media. Maybe nothing would have helped. But learn from their example and do the boy scout thing...Be Prepared.

Anybody have suggestions or thoughts about how Domino's could drag themselves out of this? What do you think businesses should do about social media eruptions? And what do you think this means for employees in the future? Will they have to sign a clause stating that they will never engage in such behavior?

Is anybody ever going to go to a restaurant to eat again if they can't watch the food being prepared????

The answers to these questions may (but likely won't) be answered on a later episode of "How the Pizza Turns (Stomachs)".

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