BUSA 2005

Chapter 14

Case Assignment

DOMINO'S PIZZA

The Internet and social media have drastically changed how information, whether true or false,

positive or negative, is spread throughout society. These advances in technology have forced

companies to reconsider how they communicate to and with customers and other stakeholders.

Marketing and other public relations officials struggle to attract and interact with customers and

potential customers in rapidly changing, often antagonistic, unmoderated environments like

Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. This is especially true in a crisis. While traditional corporate

executives are carefully crafting formal written statements, customers are blogging, tweeting, emailing,

and posting photos that are shared and spread faster than traditional communication

channels can comprehend. These customers often have the power to change the organization's

reputation before the organization has released a formal statement.

Patrick Doyle, President of Domino's Pizza, learned how simultaneously punishing and

rewarding social media can be after two employees filmed vulgar videos of each other

mishandling food while at work, and then posted the video to YouTube. The video was viewed

an estimated 1 million times in only two days, before it was removed from the site. The video

was brought to the attention of Domino's executives within 24 hours of being posted, and the

company began to communicate immediately both internally and externally with relevant

stakeholders including Domino's social media team, the senior management team, and

Domino's security. Domino's crisis team had a plan in place to deal with situations such as these;

however, their plan relied on written documents and formal press releases, as well as traditional

technology, which was essentially relegated to the company's corporate website.

Domino's tried to walk a very careful line in issuing their apology, as with all corporate

apologies; they wanted to minimize the damage to the organization's reputation, but they also

did not want to alert customers who were unaware of the situation to what had happened.

Unfortunately, as Domino's hesitated in an attempt to investigate and control the situation,

customers began tweeting about whether the company was even aware of what had happened,

and asking questions about what the company was going to do about it.

While the company had a strong social media presence on MySpace, Twitter, YouTube

and Facebook with nearly 300,000 followers, their social media was focused largely on

marketing and not crisis mitigation and communication. The incident occurred late on Easter

Sunday, and by Tuesday morning, the employees had been identified and terminated, and the

company was positioning itself to responding to customers, but customers had already

identified the issue and had been posting about it for more than 24 hours before Domino's

responded. Then, Domino's initial response was unfortunately posted to their corporate website

and received very few hits, which allowed social media users to continue to communicate with

each other with little or no apparent response from the organization.

After listening to customers' increasingly concerned tweets, however, the organization

realized that it needed to implement an immediate social media crisis management system. By

Wednesday, Patrick Doyle had recorded an apology that was uploaded to YouTube. The decision

was made to respond to the YouTube video with a YouTube apology that featured all of the

hallmarks of effective crisis communication. The apology was meant to convey to Domino's

customers who had seen the disturbing footage that the two employees were not

representative of the Domino's brand and that Domino's was sorry that it had happened and

wanted to earn consumer trust back.

The move was hailed as a success as Domino's demonstrated the importance of

reaching out to a target audience on the audience's own terms and in the audience's own

preferred communication channel. The incident occurred online, and thus had to be addressed

online. Domino's changed how organizations deal with crisis communications; it is now standard

crisis management for organizations to create social monitoring strategies for monitoring and

responding to social media dialogue. Organizations must use the same online tools as their

customers in order to effectively communicate with and to them

.

Sources: Levick, R. S. (2009, April 21). Domino's discovers social media. Bloomberg

Businessweek. Retrieved October 14, 2016, from

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2009-04-21/dominos-discovers-socialmediabusinessweek-

business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice; Flandez, R. (2009, April

20). Domino's response offers lessons in crisis management. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved

December 31, 2012, from http://blogs.wsj.com/independentstreet/2009/04/20/dominosresponse-

offers-lessons-in-crisis-management; Beaubien, G. (2009, April 21). Domino's YouTube

flap: 'A landmark event in crisis management.' Public Relations Tactics. Retrieved December 31,

2012, from

http://www.prsa.org/SearchResults/view/7978/105/Domino_s_YouTube_flap_a_landmark_eve

nt_in_crisis_m; Gregory, S. (2009, April 18). Domino's YouTube crisis: Five ways to fight back.

Time Magazine. Retrieved December 31, 2012, from

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1892389,00.html

Questions

Short Answer

1. Why did Domino's posting of an apology video to their corporate website fail to manage

customer dissatisfaction when the same video posted to YouTube had an immediate and

positive effect?

2. Domino's communicated immediately internally with Domino's social media team, the senior

management team, and Domino's security. Describe the communication channels used within

the organization in this crisis.

3. What other types of social media could Domino's have used to reach its stakeholders?

Multiple Choice

1. What is the tendency to ignore external causes of behaviour and to attribute other people's

actions to internal causes?

a. attribution theory

b. defensive bias

c. self-serving bias

d. fundamental attribution error

2. What do we call anything that interferes with the transmission of the intended message?

a. feedback

b. noise

c. jargon

d. encoding

3. How can an organization assume some of the responsibility for successful communication by

making it clear from their behaviour that they are listening carefully to what the speaker has to

say?

a. listening

b. hearing

c. active listening

d. empathetic listening