Social media has become such an integral part of many people’s lives that they wouldn’t think about going to a restaurant before first checking its reviews on Yelp, and if they have had a bad experience, you can almost guarantee that they will blog, tweet, or text about it. This means that as much as a brand can establish and communicate who they are, as soon as the brand has customers (which is hopefully right away) the essence of a company is expressed loud and clear by its patrons, satisfied or not.
While putting your reputation in the hands of the public my feel like a total loss of control to a brand manager, learning to manage a brand’s online reputation that has been fostered by, quite possibly, thousands of people is a marketing challenge that all restaurants face.
Dominos is the latest example of a brand’s reputation being ripped apart from the inside out. In an instance that has probably caused Dominos to rethink their hiring practices, online reputation has become increasingly important to the brand. (If you are not familiar with the case, the short version is this: Two Dominos employees recorded themselves doing lewd things in the back kitchen of a North Carolina location. The video goes online, it explodes virally and is picked up by mainstream media, the employees are fired and that particular Dominos location eventually closes)
So what is a brand to do when this happens?
Well, Dominos responded online within two hours of learning about the video. (Via The Consumerist) This shows that the company was already monitoring their reputation by following what was being said about them online. They also responded directly to the outlet where the story was released. They did not rely on a middle man to report the news and ask what the next step would be. This is a direct and transparent approach.
It helps that Dominos already had a social media presence through which to respond to the incident. This video response from their President, Patrick Doyle was posted from “Dominosvids”, their YouTube account:
And here is some of their communication via Twitter in regards to the situation:
So, although Dominos suffered a damaging blow to their reputation, they kept the situation somewhat under control by monitoring news regarding them, responding quickly and remaining calm.
