Did You Hear About Dominos?

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On April 15, two employees of the Conover, NC Domino’s Pizza franchise, videotaped an unsanitary prank in the restaurant’s kitchen and posted the video on YouTube. By the afternoon, the video had more than 1 million hits. As a result, late that day, Patrick Doyle, CEO of Domino’s Pizza posted a response.

He informed the general public that the Domino’s Pizza in question fired the two employees and are currently pressing charges against them. He made sure to say that they closed, cleaned and sanitized the restaurant and will be more careful about hiring practices in the future.

What do you think of the response?

I think they did a great job addressing the situation by acting immediately. Social media can either build or destroy a company’s reputation so being responsive is important.

However, in addition to changing their hiring practice methods, Domino’s should consider a policy about social media for all employees. Does Domino’s know if someone is posting a negative photo or comment on Facebook? Bebo? Plurk? Koornk? or any other social networking site? Who’s monitoring this? their PR firm? Internal PR department?

The other thing, Domino’s did not have any kind of online presence prior to this situation. On April 16, they developed a Twitter account. The problem here is it seems like they are being defensive instead of proactive in trying to know who their consumers are and what their consumers want.

Companies need to realize that in today’s social media age, it’s important to have a presence on line and to be transparent. According to a recent article in Adweek, “Reputation problems can be both prevented and remedied by thinking and acting transparently. The corporation must be ready for public scrutiny because it can occur at any time.”

So what did they do wrong?

1- They didn’t have a social media policy in place for all employees to sign

2 – They had no online presence prior to this incident

3 – They need to respond positively and put a substantial amount toward building back their reputation

Domino’s Pizza now has a long road ahead of them. They will need to counteract this negative exposure and turn it into positive publicity for all of their stores.