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Domino’s handling of “Dominogate,” a reputational crisis touched off by the posting of a video by two North Carolina employees in which one put cheese in his nose and then onto a pizza, has become a case study in social media practices almost as fast as the crisis spread. It is important to draw the right lessons from what happened.
Our reputation monitoring system shows that the company has recovered much but not all of its good name among people talking about it online. But the company lost five days to negative sentiment for having waited just one day before responding publicly. The chart below helps tell the tale:
Domino’s learned about the offensive video on April 13. The next day, while the company remained silent, the social media went wild. The video logged more than one million views before it was taken off YouTube. Most of the accompanying buzz hurt the company: negative sentiment overtook positive with respect to the brand. But a few social media users not affiliated with the company actually tracked down the location and identity of the video makers. On April 15, the president of Domino’s USA posted an apology video. Not until April 20 did positive sentiment reassume a majority share of online conversation about Domino’s.
The lessons for corporations, associations, governments, and other organizations:
- Monitor the social media, especially when its users talk TO you as well as ABOUT you. There will always be people spouting off, but they share these new, intricately networked, and highly searchable communication channels with people who respect and value you enough to address you as though you were a person. One reason Domino’s contained the scandal damage fast is because persons there listened to three individuals offering help.
- Talk back immediately upon discovery of a social media conversation about brand, principal, or advocacy agenda item. Brief acknowledgment of a breaking topic of interest from an employee speaking in a conversational voice will go a long way toward retaining reputation value among the influentials and the passionates who make the effort to talk to you.
- Have a team trained and primed to do just that: a First Responder Corps of employees. A Corps can be deployed to participate in two overlapping types of online conversations: among communities important to you (investors, opinion leaders, vendors, customers, etc.) and on topics which are gathering momentum across communities. Free-lancing is not appropriate; the range of message leeway to grant your corps members will vary from responder to responder and topic to topic. But on the whole, it’s best to have your people join in as soon as something popular arises. That’s especially so when crucial facts have yet to be confirmed, because conversationalists inside and outside your organization will help you determine the truth.
- Act when you can make proper amends and corrections. Although talking and taking responsibility both fall into the category of responsiveness, don’t confuse the two. The first buys you time to do the second with integrity and effectiveness, after you have satisfactorily separated truth from rumor, and thought about the best course of action.
- Social media listening and speaking should continue after the crisis has concluded. The crisis team and company executives will go back to their regular duties. But social media monitoring and participation ought to be a regular duty, too. That’s how you can bulk up sufficient credibility to sustain you the next time something goes wrong.
For more about our reputation monitoring system and First Responder Corps program, contact us at 720strategies.com.
About Michael
Michael, a political scientist, is the author of two books about the Internet and American politics. He currently serves as an Adjunct Professor at The Graudate School of Political Management at George Washington University.
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