Dominos pizza suffers from an ugly social web 2.0 hit well, well below the belt

Note: thanks go to my Facebook friend, Paul Vogelzang, for having shared this link on his Facebook feed

“Just about anyone can bring a company to its knees”

Starting off my day to this story is quickly making my coffee taste sour … so much so, I can feel my stomach churning with angst and disgust. As USA Today‘s Bruce Horovitz reports in his article “Domino’s nightmare holds lessons for marketers,” two Domino employees filmed themselves doing extremely disgusting things to take out food including (omg, I am struggling to keep my coffee down) … well, you know what ??? I much prefer to keep my caffeine coursing through my nervous system rather than coating the keys of my keyboard …. therefore, sorry … you’ll just have to read the article for yourself. I just can’t bring myself to even type up very specific things that these two employees did to the food people like and me would order when we call a fast food place up.

For our purposes, however, what we need to know is that these two low lives did horrible, disgusting things to the food and then had the audacity to film themselves doing it and then posting the video online. USA Today reports their food folly video had been viewed more than 550,000 times by yesterday.

Marketers getting an *instant* lesson in the dangers of an online world

Ouch! Egad! Yikes! Holy toledo and just … daaaammmnn!!!! How troubling of a PR horror show would this be for any restaurant or dining establishment? One can only even begin to imagine. The article states Dominos has received some praise from “social-networking and crisis-management gurus about its response” and that the company acted quickly.

No such mention or statement to date, however, has been posted on its press release and news area of its corporate site. Seems like the company is attacking this nightmare from within social networks:

Domino’s first responded on consumer affairs blog The Consumerist, whose activist readers helped track down the store and employees who made the video. Then it responded on the Twitter site where talk was mounting. “Domino’s did the right thing by reinstituting the trust where it was lost,” says Brian Solis, a new-media specialist and blogger at PR2.0.

Another reason to monitor social media

For folks who are still on the fence about social media usage for business or for those who throw on their garlic necklaces and splat their computer monitors with holy water to protect themselves from ever having to be bothered with social media anything, let this be a lesson. Here’s yet another good reason to patrol your business and your brand chatter on social networks.

“Big companies must actively watch Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social sites to track conversations that involve them. That will help uncover potential crises-in-the-making,” says Solis. I would add here that it shouldn’t be just big companies; I’d argue anyone in business for that matter should monitor their company name, their brand, their product name and otherwise patrol the social scene for any potential uprisings or negative seeds and tend to these instances before they mushroom well out of control.

Mayra Ruiz Mcpherson

Brand Journalist and Digital Strategist Mayra Ruiz-McPherson is founder of Ruiz McPherson Communications (RMC), a marketing ingenuity practice based in Herndon, Virginia. Mayra — who also founded and launched the online career community SocialMediaJobsDC.com — often presents various digital and social media-focused topics tailored to business owners and senior-level marketing managers. She also instructs a number of courses, workshops and training sessions as well as provides private, on-site training on social media tools and strategies.

In between professional engagements, Mayra guest blogs and contributes content regularly to a number of publications both in and outside the Washington DC metro area. Mayra is also the editor of The Better Social Business Blog, "Pet Tech" columnist for the Virginia Maryland Dog Magazine, contributes an “e-Trends” column to the Loudoun Business Journal and is founder of the Loudoun Fairfax Local Bloggers Meetup group which mentors and helps local bloggers network, learn and exchange ideas.