The Domino's Case: How employees can harm a brand through Social Media

Please, if you are having dinner, my apologies. Good news? This case is from years ago and it happen on the other side of the world.

We all know Domino's, the multinational fast food franchise specialized in pizzas. Well, what happen to them a few years ago has to be a company's worst nightmare... A couple of their employees in a restaurant in the U.S. decided to make a very distasteful video of them adding 'extra' disgusting ingredients to the food and messing with it in the kitchen, and then uploaded the video to Youtube. After finding out about this incident, Domino's fired the employees and closed the restaurant for sanitation. They were also sued for delivering prohibited food, even though the employees stated that none of those products were sold.

Thanks to the velocity with which news travel in the Internet, the video got over a million views in hours. "References to it were in five of the 12 results on the first page of Google search for 'Dominos', and discussions about Domino’s had spread throughout Twitter." (The New York Times).

But the mistake was that the CEO reacted late and began publishing apologies on printed media, instead of social media, where everything was still happening. Eventually, he released his own Youtube video, and even though it was a good call, it did not have the expected impact.  Because... Why would I think everything is all right now? There are hundreds of restaurants world-wide and there has to be another pair of crazy pranksters in the world that could mess with my food, right?

I would rather not to think about this anymore. 

So, what were the consequences of this prank video? As usual, I leave you with a little graphic below.
As for tangible consequences, I think the expenses made in legal proceedings against the former employees and the risk of the company being sued, which luckily did not happen. In addition, there is the loss of income from that particular restaurant because it was closed and the costs of sanitizing it. 

But Domino's is a big company, that amount of money must have been nothing for them, what I think were the outcomes that really hurt them at the time, were the ones related to their customers. Although they kind-of gain publicity from the incident, it was bad publicity, and in this case I do not think there is such thing as 'bad publicity is better than no publicity', no way, we are dealing with health here. 

The fall in the company's reputation, the loss of customers' trust in the brand and all the negative comments on Twitter and other social media were motives enough for Domino's to improve their social game.

Domino's decided to double the stakes and face a brand reposition strategy and reputation management, by using Twitter to hear what their customers had to say and reach out to them, in campaigns such as Domino's Pizza Turnaround, where they expected customers to say anything bad about the pizzas so they could work on that. It had a great amount of feedback from Twitter and they actually change the products, but the questions in some customers still remained, 'How do I know it is for real?', well, hopefully Domino's will prove itself.

That was a case of poor ethics from the employees, and the 8 Ethical Principles (Rogerson & Fidler, n.d) were violated in some way. The actions were not correct, even if the employees did not put the items for sale, it was a totally inappropriate behaviour and showed no respect for their company, customers and fellow employees, they were unprofessional and represented their organisation as one with low quality and health standards. Finally, they did not think about the huge consequences for the company and themselves, of posting the video online or, for that matter, making it in the first place.

Prevent this type of behaviours from employees in social media is really complicated, but as mentioned in the Key risks and concerns of E2.0 (Dawson, 2008), training and clear policies might minimize the risks of events like this happening. Also, keeping staff motivated and growing their attachment and commitment to the company could be another way of precluding this actions.

I think I extended this post a little, but I really enjoyed blogging about Enterprise 2.0 today, hopefully I will carry on with this blog.

So, tell me...

What do you think about employees behaviours on Social Media?

Don't forget to comment and follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and even LinkedIn. (Links here and on the top right side, above my face). 

References

Dawson, R., Hough, J., Hill, J., Winterford, B., & Alexandrov, D. (2008). Implementing enterprise 2.0. San Francisco; Sydney: Advanced Human Technologies.

Rogerson, S., & Fidler, C. (n.d.). A practical perspective on information ethics. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/322961/A_Practical_Perspective_of_Information_Ethics

Want to know more?

Video Prank at Domino’s Taints Brand

Domino's: How One YouTube Video Can Ruin a Brand (Updated)

Caso Domino's Pizza: Crisis y Reputation Management

Domino's Pizza on the Today Show - Workers fired for Dominos prank video

Domino's President Responds To Prank Video

Blurring the lines between physical and digital

I have been off for several days now. Certainly getting sick has not helped me with my assignments or my beloved E2.0 blog. But, I am feeling better now and it is time to catch up. So, here is the first blog for Portfolio #2.

The title of this post is borrowed from Angela Ahrendts, former CEO of Burberry and now Retail Chief at Apple.

Founded in 1856, Burberry is a global luxury brand with a distinctive British identity. The company designs and sell fashion and accessories for a diversified network of retail, wholesale and licensing channels worldwide.

Angela Ahrendts in the Burberry's Social Enterprise video states: "You have to be totally connected with everyone who touches your brand." And the iconic, fashion brand embraces the Web and social media to extend the brand and engage with customers and followers in entirely new ways. I think is better to start with this brief video so you can understand which 'ways' I am talking about.

Does this make you want to do a little shopping? Because it definitely makes me, want to break my piggy bank. But most importantly, it amazes me with all the innovative ideas that came from the heads of Angela Ahrendts and Christopher Bailey, Creative Chief Officer, to bring back what was thought as an old brand, described as just "British and plaid" by Maureen Mullen, the director of research and advisory for L2, a think tank for digital innovation, which named Burberry the top-ranked brand in its Digital IQ Index for two years in a row. "That brand now, in the minds of consumers, means British, plaid - and innovation", she stated for the Burberry, entrenched in the digisphere blog post.

I created this graphic with a summary of the Burberry strategies and the value levers to which I think they apply. Let's discuss how the social technologies are applied to the McKinsey value levers from two main areas, Marketing and Sales, and Customer Service.

One of the ways Burberry uses social technologies for Marketing and Sales and Customer care is with social media. It is the most followed luxury brand on Facebook, with over 17 million fans, and the numbers keep growing for the other 'usual' social media sites. But besides them, Burberry has created profiles to attract the Chinese market with an estimated audience exceeding 11 million users, according to Luxury Society.

All these social media buzz is monitored with technology provided by its partnership with Salesforce, which in my opinion, was what started it all. We can see here the sketch drawn by salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff on how Burberry could be a social enterprise overlaying Salesforce (CRM), SAP, Twitter and Facebook. The goal was the total integration among the company, its employees, its customers, and the brand. And they are succeeding at it. 

With Burberry Bespoke, they are deriving the customer insights on new ideas for their trench coat models, and also they provide assistance to the client that requires it, either with the live chat, or one can even make an appointment in the moment to make her dream trench a reality. Art of the trench and Runway to reality are initiatives in which Burberry is building the loyalty of customers using technology to make them feel closer to the brand. With their own social-networking site, they are engaging their customers and having them constantly thinking about the brand. 

The Burberry Kisses is an application I actually used a few years ago, and I thought it was the most adorable idea. To send an email to a loved one and actually see the travel of your card with Google technology was incredible, and I remember telling everyone I knew about it. So, for some this may have no actual impact on Burberry, but I think it was a way to put their name into my mind and build a sort of 'relationship' with me as a user.

Finally, customer care is provided but all the previous strategies, but what stands the most I think is the Burberry World Live. How incredible is that Burberry truly tried to blur the lines between physical and digital and create a store designed just like their site.  

These are all ways in which Burberry has embraced the social technologies for marketing, but also to interact and connect not only with their customers but also with people like me, who wait until the day we can afford a Burberry trench coat.

Did you enjoy this story? Don't you think that Burberry is really going for the social technology here? 

PS. During my sick days I gave my blog a more sophisticated look and included my social media, feel free to follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and even LinkedIn; and don't forget to leave me some feedback.

Want to read more?

Burberry on Salesforce
How Burberry Does Digital
Burberry, the digital enterprise
Burberry: entrenched in the digisphere
How Burberry's digital strategy is boosting brand value
Burberry Struts Ahead With Tech Transformation Begun By Apple's Angela Ahrendts

Discovering new social tools

I do consider myself a Social Technology beginner. Aside from my usual daily Facebooking and Instagraming for purely social purposes, I never took a real interest on other tools. So, this week I decided to tackle on some new tools.

First, let's talk about Delicious. I have to say that I was firstly attracted by the name, I was curious and wondered 'What makes this site delicious?', so I looked it up and sign on it.

Delicious is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing and discovering web bookmarks instead of just saving them in your web browser. For more information you can go here.

After signing in, I realised that it has a very simple interface, nothing delicious about it, and the first thing that caught my eye (and I hated it) was the big advertisement at the top. Maybe at the bottom of the page it would not been as annoying, but it was a really distracting feature.

I find it a really good tool for organizing my bookmarks, especially since at work I needed to do a large amount of research, and having all those pages in my web browser, got a little messy, and if I wanted to use other computers I did not have access to all my saved pages. 

Tagging is the primary component in Delicious, you cannot create files, but by using tags related to your bookmarks you can organize them, find them and what is best, and see if other users have the same web page saved. And there is where the 'social' bookmarking comes.

Social bookmarking means that you can actually see other people bookmarks in your network or in the Delicious world and share them or use them. Just by tagging. Is in that way, that you can start following people with the same interests or work you have. You can start sharing relevant content with people at work or school and build networks, or you can go from one person's tag to another and find more information about the topic you were looking for. And if you want to have some privacy, you can have private bookmarks too. Just in case.

Also, it has an interesting set of keyboard shortcuts that I would have to familiarize with, but they are useful. Overall, I find it interesting and I think I will use it from now on.

My second tool choice is Vine, I heard of this one before, but always thought of it as the same as the video-sharing feature of Instagram.

And it is, actually Vine allows you less recording time than Instagram, only 6 seconds.

Elise Moreau from aboutTechnology defines Vine as a video-sharing app that is not just any video-sharing app. It’s designed in a way for you to film short, separate instances so they can be linked together for a total of six seconds. Each short video plays in a continuous loop, and are viewable directly in Twitter’s timeline or embedded into a web page.

It was a fun tool, really easy to use and by linking it with my Twitter account, it allowed me to have all my contacts. But I do not really use Twitter, I am a Facebook kind of person and sadly, Vine can not access Facebook friends, so personally I do not think I will stay on Vine. Another detail is that if I want to record a video it has to be using the Vine app and not my camera roll and upload it a later time to Vine, so I think I will stick to my photo-sharing Instagram. Nevertheless, the idea of using it within a business environment seems really appealing and I do get caught into watching these short videos whether they are made in Vine or Instagram.

Here is a video of how Lowe's (an American chain of retail home improvement and appliance stores) uses Vine and Twitter to attract more customers... and works!

I recommend you to check 6 of the Best, Boldest uses of Vine in Marketing, it has some really good Vines made by some companies you must know.

Want to know more?

 

About Delicious and Social Bookmarking:

Delicious.com
Wikipedia on Delicious
Wikipedia on Social Bookmarking
Commoncraft on Social Bookmarking
Technology Resource Teachers

About Vine:

Vine.co
Wikipedia on Vine
What Is Vine?
6 Reasons why Vine and Instagram are great for your Business
How 15 Real Businesses Are Getting Creative With Vine for Marketing

Successful blogging advice

Image edited by me. Original source: Link

What do we mean by "successful"? Does that mean that we have to make money of it? Do we have to have a million readers? What if we just want to write about our personal experiences and use it as a personal diary, do we want that too? What if we use it just as a way to get out of our shelves?

I think that a blog will be successful once it has built a community. Regardless of its size, the main reason to share whatever it is we have to say is exactly that: Sharing. Sharing information with someone in the world who would have the same interests, the same issues, the same experiences.

Since this will be a blog about incorporating social media into enterprises, what I want to share with you is the knowledge I will obtain from my research and further understanding on how to do it. But I also want this class and this blog to guide me through the path of writing correctly and consistently about the things I am interested to share, and build a community from that, where we can give each other feedback and constructive criticism.

So, I am new in this blogging world, but after some reading I can share with you what I think makes a blog a success.

Content and Consistency

Keep your blog content consistent in terms of posting schedule, content and tone. Be aware that consistency does not mean 'the same', try to keep content varied and interesting so the readers will come back for more.

When writing, find your niche, write about something you are passionate about and willing to share with people, be honest and be yourself, tell your story but also try to write FOR them, ask yourself if this is something they want and tailor your writing to your readers, so you keep them interested and involved in your stories.

Once you find the general topic for your blog, be original, there is going to be a lot of other blogs out there talking about the same stuff you want to share, but give it your own twist. Why would your blog be any different? Because of you! Of the way YOU are sharing content with them. 

A tip from Joshua and Ryan from The Minimalists: "when writing use we/our instead of you, think of it as we are writing peer-to-peer, we are not gods".

And don't forget to do some research, it is ok that you want to share your thoughts on things but you need to have all the knowledge needed so you can give a more focused approach.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Make sure your tags and categories are relevant, ensure your post title accurately describes the content of your blog and get linked by others, to improve the way search engines find you and help your readers find the content they are interested in.

Layout and Images

Look at your blog from a reader's perspective. Is it easy to find content? Is it easy to read? Your blog should be clean and organised in a way the reader feels comfortable navigating through it. Don't forget to categorise your posts and add your contact information and a few words about yourself.

I recommend from my personal experience, using a white background. I find it more visually pleasing to the eye and easy to read text on. In the creation of a blog, less is more. Keep it simple and do not fill your page with distractions or flashy announcements.

The use of images adds interest to the blog and makes it more appealing (yes, this is not one of those). The images and photographs should be big and clear because people respond well to big images. But also, because most of our readers will check our posts from their mobile devices and images should be clear in a smaller scale. So make sure your blog is mobile friendly too.

Also consider adding a photo and description of yourself near the top of your blog. It will instantly make your blog relatable and we will be able to know a little bit about the person whose blog we are reading. 

Building a community

Finally, but the most important part, build your community by using comments, social media, e-mail and collaborations. Be active in your social media sites and share every time you publish a new post, allow comments from your readers and actually read them and answer when possible, it is a great way to cultivate a relationship with them because they will give you feedback and by doing so, you will feel the need to improve your blogging skills. 

Here, Scott Stratten shares an interesting article about The Five Words That Kill Your Blog.

Another important part of blogging is collaboration with other bloggers. Using the same strategies used on readers, build relationships your fellow bloggers to get inspiration and learn from them. Write guest posts with them and their readers will come to your blog and increase the communities already built. 

So, I know it is a little bit long but, what do you think about my first post? Do you agree?