The Damaging Power of Social Media

Two employees of Domino played a prank and filmed a video inside a Domino pizza hut - they had no idea what storm/avalanche, they were building for Domino's .

The employees filmed a prank video of themselves stuffing cheese up their noses and then putting it on Domino’s sandwiches. In the video, as one of the employees appears to tamper with the food, the other is heard saying: “In about five minutes this will be sent out on delivery where someone will actually be eating it.” 

The two then posted the video to YouTube, where it proceeded to get more than a million hits over a few days. News of the video spread like wildfire on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, and it wasn’t until a strong loyalist of Domino's alerted Domino’s to the offensive posting that it was finally removed. 

Domino’s struggled to respond - should they be saying that this was a joke , or a disgruntled employee taking on the organisation or that their store conditions are far more hygienic than the other pizza stores and hence the video/story should be ignored etc etc 

Finally Dominos responded.

Its president posted his own YouTube video apologizing for the incident and repeatedly stressing that it was a misguided joke. “There is nothing more important or sacred to us than our customers’ trust,” said CEO Patrick Doyle. “It sickens me that the act of two individuals could impact our great system.” 

But the damage to the brand was already done- in terms of loss of sales and customer's trust, costs associated with salvaging the brand and the campaigns assocaietd with it, , employee embarrassment and morale etc etc . It took almost a quarter of the year to reach back to the previous sales . 

Think Bigger, Better, Bolder, Beyond and Before Others !