Upheavals

Lessons from Dominos

The key point about the Domino’s story is that it goes to much more basic points than hygiene standards in the food industry or the increasing influence of social media (just in case there are those who think they are immune from such a situation because they don’t serve food and/or they’re not consumer-facing).

If you don’t actively manage the internal perception of your brand all the way through to who you hire and how you inspire, then your business model really is as fragile and as vulnerable as two bored dudes with a camera and an online account. Any sector, any time, any country.

Second lesson. The nature of outrage has changed. Thanks to Twitter and others, it has transformed from a groundswell, a headline or an article into a global firestorm complete with its own momentum. If your media response strategy has not changed to keep pace with that, then you will quickly find yourself on the back foot – at the very time when you don’t need to be discovering that.

That may well mean you need to seriously review who has your back in such situations. Your PR company may be excellent at dealing with the traditional media, but are they equipped to douse the blogosphere? Ask them.

Third lesson. The repercussions can fall both ways. In addition to criminal charges and a potential lawsuit, those who took part in the Dominos episode now have what amounts to their CV online potentially forever. The Internet doesn’t have a clean-slate policy.

POSTED: Wednesday, 22 April 2009

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