The impact of misusing social media: Domino's Pizza case study.

Hello dear readers !

In the last few weeks we discussed the benefits of implementing social media among different organisations; such: Sony and ASOS. Then, we went through examining the measurable benefits and the real business of enterprise 2.0 in the ROI post. This week we are going to discuss the impacts of misusing social media within an organisation, particularly Domino's pizza.

About Dominos :

Domino’s pizza is an international pizza chain, established in the USA year 1960 in Michigan near Eastern Michigan University by the Monaghan brothers. Domino's pizza first international store was opened in Canada, on May 12, 1983 ( See Domino's pizza history). Domino's pizza serves different menus according to the region's preference and culture. However, the menu is always designed to be simple to ensure the delivery efficiency. The current Australian menu features variety of Italian entrees, meat pie pizzas, oven Baked Sandwiches, desserts and beverages. Pizza is the main focus, with traditional,or custom toppings including Prawns, Chicken, Lamb shank, Duck & much more. Domino's pizza is the second largest pizza chain in the USA (Industry Data, 2011), and the largest in the globe with over 220 thousand employees working at 1200 branches around the world. The graph below highlights the 73 countries that Domino’s pizza is located on.

Map showing Domino's Pizza's global locations.

Source: Wikipedia

In the world of social media, Domino's pizza's game is on. Here are some popular tweets from the company's official account that went all over twitter and tumblr.( For the company's good of course).

Domino's is also active at YouTube and Facebook. The thing that Domino's could not plan for, however, was two of its employees that broadcast a disgusting video on youtube.

The infamous Domino's pizza incident :

Two employees of the chain’s restaurant located in Conover, New Carolina, posted a prank video to YouTube on 12 April, 2009. In this video they depicted a number of acts that seriously violated health regulations. Some of the depictions included smearing nasal mucous on sandwiches and using cheese pushed up the nose before delivery of these food items. One of the employees performed these acts while the other provided narration (Gregory, 2009). The video immediately went viral and was viewed more than a million times by 15th April. It trended on Twitter and a Google search for the term “Dominos” showed references to the video or the incident in the first 3 pages results. The employees were eventually identified and charged by the police.

      The incident was bad for business since the company operates in the food business and must adhere to agreed hygienic and health standards in the orders that it delivers. The reason that the video went viral was that customers across the nation were shocked that Domino’s employees claimed such incidents were taking place. Since the video was created and uploaded by actual employees, social media users believed that this was a practice in many of the restaurants run by Dominos franchisees.

The impact :

The incident generated a credibility crisis for the company and many longtime, regular customers were seriously offended or alarmed. The reputation of the business was seriously harmed and perception about quality of its products went from positive to negative among many customers (Clifford, 2009). Public relations experts agreed that it was a highly damaging incident for Domino’s, especially because it occurred primarily in the fast moving social media space.

Social media reaction
Source: Trendrr

There were a number of measurable as well as non-measurable impacts of the incident. Tangible impacts included revenue loss due to decreased sales – a study found that 65% of respondents who were potential customers of Domino’s were less likely to buy food form the chain after they watched the offending video (Flandez, 2009). The intangible effects of the incident were loss of reputation, negative brand perception and negative exposure in the social media. The delayed response to top management was also criticized to some extent in traditional media (Flandez, 2009).

The organization implemented a risk management plan that it had devised earlier. However, the plan was directed more towards traditional media management – its social media plan was only in the process of being developed (Jacques, 2009). Although the concerned Domino’s franchisee fired the two employees on the 14th of April, alerted health authorities and discarded all suspected food, top management tried to allow the controversy go out of public memory and did not respond aggressively. In particular, their Twitter and YouTube responses were delayed (Clifford, 2009). If the incident is analyzed in terms of Rogerson’s eight ethical principles, it can be stated that the employees acted in a dishonest and unfair manner, for Domino’s customers believe in the honesty of the company to maintain food standards (Brinkman & Sanders, 2012, p. 327).

How could Dominos avoid such a ‘misuse’ in the future?

In order to prevent such misuse in the future, the company can adopt two responses. It can train its franchisees and their employees more carefully, stressing the need to adhere to safety precautions, and create an awareness campaign outlining the efforts it has made. The other response is to better coordinate its social media strategy. It should create a blog that highlights the safe practices that it has implemented and how it cares about its customers. It can identify its loyal customers and send them email notes or newsletters expressing its appreciation about their loyalty, offer them rewards, and request them to spread the message among their friends. It should update the Domino’s Wikipedia page quickly if another such incident recurs in the future, for Wikipedia is informally referenced by many people. It should also create response videos and post them online more quickly and create link backs to these videos from its Tweets and other media campaigns. A concerted and well thought out social media strategy that complements its brand building exercise will help the company to recover more quickly in the future.

In conclusion:

Social media is such a powerful tool, if it is used in the wrong way it would result in great loss. Domino's pizza case is one of many examples. However, by implementing strict policies and providing professional training companies can avoid such criss.

If you owned a business one day, What strategies would you follow to avoid such misuse from your employees ?

Leave me a comment and Thank you for passing by.

REFERENCES:

Brinkman, W. & Sanders, A. (2012). Ethics in a Computing Culture [EBL version]. Retrieved from http://www.cengagebrain.co.nz/content/9781133990932.pdf

Clifford, S. (2009, April 15). Video Prank at Domino’s Taints Brand. The New York Times. Retrieved from  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/business/media/16dominos.html?_r=2&

Flandez, R. (2009). Domino’s Response Offers Lessons in Crisis Management. The Wall Street Journal Blogs. Retrieved from http://blogs.wsj.com/independentstreet/2009/04/20/dominos-response-offers-lessons-in-crisis-management/

Gregory, S. (2009, April 18). Domino's YouTube Crisis: 5 Ways to Fight Back. Time. Retrieved from http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1892389,00.html

Industry Data.(2011).Top 100 Chains: U.S. Sales (Statistical Division). Retrieved from http://nrn.com/us-top-100/top-100-chains-us-sales

Jacques, A. (2009). Domino’s delivers during crisis: The company’s step-by-step response after a vulgar video goes viral. The Public Relations Society of America. Retrieved from http://www.prsa.org/Intelligence/TheStrategist/Articles/view/8226/102/Domino_s_delivers_during_crisis_The_company_s_step#.VCKhRRYy0fY