By B.L. Ochman
These are confusing days for companies used to doing business by pre-Internet rules. We’re in an age of conversation, collaboration, and real-time communication. It’s not just how we communicate that has changed, but also how products are created, sold, bought, and evaluated.
Corporations’ old-fashioned, secretive, top-down approach to communication is being turned on its head. Power has shifted to consumers, and change is happening at dizzying speed.
Just ask Amazon.com (AMZN) and Domino’s Pizza (DPZ). Both brands have sustained heavy damage in recent days and neither company was prepared to confront or contain crises that wound up greatly amplified in the blogs, Twitter and other social media.
As you’ve surely heard by now, on Apr. 13, two Domino’s Pizza employees turned the 50-year-old company’s reputation to toast after they filmed themselves doing nasty things to cheese and other sandwich ingredients they said were about to be sent out to customers. Within two days, the video had been viewed more than a million times on Google’s (GOOG) YouTube. As of Apr. 17, a Google search for “Dominos” still turned up multiple, prominent references to the video, including one in the third-highest spot. Late on Apr. 15, Domino’s responded with a YouTube video message from Patrick Doyle, president of Domino’s USA. By late the following day, the video had only about 66,000 views. (It’s now been seen about 450,000 times.)
“Punk’d by Social Media”
Just days before the Domino’s debacle, Amazon was plunged into a controversy of its own. Overnight, sales rankings and search results for gay and lesbian books seemed to disappear from Amazon’s Web site. Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and other online forums erupted with criticism. Amazon said nothing for two days until it told the Associated Press that there was a “glitch” in its system. Twitter users immediately responded by attaching a tag (#glitchmyass) to their tweets that made it abundantly clear that they weren’t buying Amazon’s explanation.
In response to my AdAge post on Amazon’s silence, a commenter said the social-media firestorm might have made a million or so people aware of either problem–a number he insisted isn’t big enough to have long-term impact on the brand. But a million people are enough to swing an election, populate a fair-sized city, and turn a book or movie into a hit. And if each of those million people tells just one other person, the brand damage begins to multiply.
Domino’s quickly was added to a long, growing list of brands that have been, in the words of Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang, “punk’d by social media.”
I’ve got some advice for companies that want to keep their brands off that list of shame.
1. Monitor your brand 24/7. We live in a 24/7 world. Deal with it. Information flows in real time. Finding out tomorrow about a problem isn’t soon enough.
There are numerous free and paid tools for monitoring social media.
But monitoring is not enough.
2. Establish a credible presence in blogs and social media. If Amazon or Domino’s had a brand presence on Twitter, either could have responded to conversation quickly. Chances are good that their participation would have been welcome. All they had to say was: “Thanks for letting us know there’s a problem. We’re looking into it.” If the issue blew over quickly, that wouldn’t hurt anything. If it escalated, at least they would have joined the conversation early.
Domino’s was right to cut the video, but it acted too late. Anyone who cared knew a full day earlier that the employees had been identified, fired, and prosecuted.
3. Acknowledge the conversation where it’s happening. When a statement is issued, don’t ignore new media. Domino’s and Amazon talked to mainstream media first, ignoring bloggers and social networks. That strategy backfired.
Endless conversations about whether blogs are journalism, or whether Twitter has any actual communication value, are moot. They’re here, they’ve got millions of readers (more than much of mainstream media), and many of the writers are trusted online influencers. The day after the crisis erupted, while the blogosphere was ablaze with the news, major news outlets had yet to contact Domino’s spokesman Tim McIntyre, according to Ragan.com. “Right now, it’s on Web sites and blogs,” McIntyre is quoted as telling the blog. “It’s not ABC, CNN, or USA Today.” What’s that supposed to mean? It’s not news if mainstream media ignores it? Tell that to the Tweeters.
Amazon waited three days before issuing an official statement to AP, admitting that they handled the incident in a way that was “embarrassing and ham-fisted.” While the company’s chief technology officer is on Twitter, he didn’t say a word about the incident.
4. Explain how you’ll address the problems to prevent them from recurring. Companies whose customers complain are the lucky ones. The real problem is people who get so disgusted they walk away without saying a word, never to return.
Listen. Respond. Help. Here’s a list of companies already involved in Twitter. Their approach may not be perfect, but at least they aren’t ignoring the millions of people who talk to each other online. Here are more than 35 examples from Mashable. If you are listening, responding, and yes, changing, you are more likely to keep complaining customers than to lose them.
5. Have a crisis strategy ready to roll. The main thing Domino’s and Amazon had in common is that they did not have a social-media crisis strategy in place. If you haven’t participated in social media deeply enough to know who your brand evangelists are and where they talk to each other, how are you going to be able to enlist their help in a crisis?
If you don’t have tools in place to monitor your brand–and if you’d have to scramble at the onset of a crisis to set up a blog, learn how to send a message or post a link in Facebook, develop a channel on YouTube, and follow people on Twitter–you’re already too late.
Cartoon by Hugh Macleod
This article also appears in Businessweek.com
This is an excellent look at the recent mishaps of some pretty big companies. It still amazes me that companies, like these, are not even actively monitoring and engaging when conversations do arise. At bare minimum this is now a requirement.
Thanks for your always incredible insight :-)
Maria Reyes-McDavis
“Employees turned the 50-year-old company’s reputation to toast?” Give me a break. It didn’t turn the reputation to toast. You’re just sensationalizing this. Most people know that this was just an isolated incident. Check Domino’s unit sales revenue the following week.
Joel Cohen
http://www.RestaurantMarketingBlog.com
I’m a big believer in the power of companies engaging with their customers openly and honestly, not only when there is a crisis to PR about, but on an ongoing basis. Loved the article!. Thanks
Maria – thank you so much for your kind words! You made my day!
Joel – isolated incident or not, as a result of these videos a lot of people will take pause when they think of eating at Domino’s. Videos like these are not an isolated phenomenon when everyone and his dog has a video camera in his phone.
You really hit the nail on the head with the third tip. I think ignoring the conversation occurring in the blogosphere and on social media sites was a critical mistake. That’s how most people learned about the issues with Domino’s and Amazon.
http://cshaner.wordpress.com
@ BL–On point number #2 Monitoring your Brand, I think that this is much harder than you give companies credit for. As an example, if someone spread untrue rumors about you on social networking sites and on blogs how long do you think it would take before you noticed. Provided that no one told me, it could take a few days for me to notice. Considering I care much more about my brand than any employees care about their company brand, I think we have to cut Amazon and Dominos some slack on this one.
Monitoring your brand is a 24/7 responsibility. There are a host of tools, paid and free, which companies and individuals can use. I track my personal brand pretty closely, and although it might take me hours to find a mention, it’s very, very unlikely to take days.
If you have relationships in a variety of social networks, the likelihood is great that someone would tell you about an issue – if you hadn’t found it yourself. Not keeping tabs on one’s brand is no longer an option.
Most of us don’t think things will go bad until they do. Burned once shame on you; burned twice shame on MJ.
I saw the story about Dominos on the Today Show last week. Does the company have any sort of Rules of Conduct which include social media? Unbelievable that people can be so mindless to create such a horrible video and then claim it was all pretend. I know I won’t be eating at Domino’s after seeing that video on You Tube.
The Dominos incident was the result of employees going bad. I don’t see what the company could have done even if it had a strong social media presence. I am not a legal bird but I feel the company should sue those employees besides having sacked them. That is the minimum.
If Domino’s already had an established social media presence, like Zappos, JetBlue, Dell, or many other companies, they could have immediately responded to their brand evangelists in those communities.
Waiting 48 hours online is like waiting a week pre-Internet. We live in a real-time news cycle now. They’re making an effort to establish a dialog now, and that will help if there is another PR crisis.
These employees are definitely in the wrong for ever thinking something like this is amusing or funny at all. I strongly agree that Dominos needs to monitor their social media more effectively but I also think they need to monitor their own employees better. I know I will definitely think twice before ordering Dominos after seeing how the employees acted with this certain instance. Social media can work very effective for companies, but things like this only hurt them if they aren’t being monitored correctly.