Posts Tagged ‘Pizza Hut’

Domino’s Brand Suffers Because of Pubescent Humor on Youtube

Written by Cari on . Posted in branding, buzz, Negative PR, social media, Social Networking, Viral Marketing

Domino's Pizza, LLC
Image via Wikipedia

Bad news for Domino’s. Look at what happens when you hire teenage boys who know about Youtube! Yep, they make stupid videos. It’s a risk that every fast-food company takes when they hire adolescents. Too bad that this video really screwed with Domino’s brand.

If you haven’t heard, two employees of Domino’s – now former employees – made a Youtube where they did inappropriate and disgusting things to the food before boxing it up. The video ended up getting crazy popular and had more than a million views within 24 hours. The video has since been taken off Youtube by Domino’s.

Image representing YouTube as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

Had the video been positive, that amount of buzz in such a short amount of time would have been amazing for Domino’s. But alas, it was really bad.

The Youtube video and the buzz it created on other social networks had the capacity to kill the brand. But Domino’s acted quickl enough to prevent any further damage to the company.

Patrick Doyle, CEO of Domino’s Pizza USA, created his own Youtube video to respond to the concerns created by the previous video. His video showed sincerity and concern for Domino’s customers and assured everyone that everything is being done to prevent that kind of behavior from being repeated. The store where the video was shot has actually been shut down and undergoing intense cleaning. There is also an investigation to see if this kind of behavior is taking place in other stores.

Domino’s reacted well to a bad situation and have taken the first step to regaining customer trust. However, in true Buzz.io fashion, we must point out that this situation didn’t need to be nearly as damaging to their brand. If they had already set up social network accounts, especially Twitter, they would have known about the video almost instantly and would have been able to take the video down before more than a million people saw it.

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Image via CrunchBase

Pizza Hut, knowing that they hire people of the same caliber as Domino’s, have already created a new position in their company – the “twintern”. The twintern’s purpose is to be the voice of Pizza Hut on social networks. Luckily they are learning from Domino’s mistakes.

To Domino’s credit, they have set up a Twitter account since the incident. Too bad they didn’t think of that last week.

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