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Have you seen the prank videos from a couple of bored Domino’s employees in Conover? Before they were removed from YouTube at the request of the employee who shot it (whether or not she was pressured to do so by corporate), they garnered a million views.

In it, an employee put cheese up his nose, and farted and sneezed on sandwich fixings he was handling, while the narrator described how those sandwiches were on their way to customers. He also wiped his butt with a sponge and used it to wash dishes.

The video went viral and generated a public relations nightmare for both the Domino’s franchise and the local franchisee (owner). The employees were charged this morning with felony food tampering, although they have said that none of the tainted food was ever served.

There is a lot here to talk about from the business attorney’s perspective, which I will address in a series of blogs:

1. The Power of Social Media
2. Corporate Damage Control
3. Negligent Hiring
4. Franchising

These employees were goofing around. But imagine what a couple employees with a grudge and a video camera could do to your business.

The videos were posted Monday, and by Wedneday about a million people had seen them. It was spread through services like Twitter, Digg, and StumbleUpon. Readers of a popular consumer protection site that blogged about the video, identified the particular franchise by brief footage shot through the drive-through window, and notified the Domino’s CEO.

Twitter is a service where people “micro-blog” or send 140-word updates (“tweets’) on their activities, interests, opinions, blogs, etc. Numerous people commented on how gross the video was and “tweeted” to their friends, who presumably then also watched the video and “tweeted” to their friends.

Digg is a site where people submit news, videos, photos or other online content for other users to vote on (i.e., they “digg” it). More than 6200 people “dugg” the Domino’s video, which would translate into tens of thousands of people being directed to the video just from Digg alone.

StumbleUpon another social bookmarking site, similarly directs traffic to content, and many thousands more likely found the video that way. I’m sure numerous other people shared this video with their friends on Facebook and MySpace.

Domino’s opened its Twitter account yesterday, but many other companies have successfully used social media to their advantage to respond to customer complaints, launch new products or generate buzz.

I am not an expert on social media, but I would advise my clients to include social media in their overall marketing program. These social media outlets have become very powerful and mainstream. For some social marketing experts take on responding to social media attacks, click here and here.

Another example of how social media can affect local businesses is Yelp. Readers post reviews of restaurants, stores, hotels, mechanics, etc. Until recently, there was no way for a local business to respond to these reviews, but Yelp recently changed its policy to allow business owners to correct incorrect facts. For example, if someone writes a scathing review of your snail souffle, you can post that you don’t serve snail souffle. You would not, however, be able to challenge the opinions that the vegetables were mushy, the service slow or the atmosphere run-down.

The larger point is to be aware of what your customers are saying. Word of mouth marketing is very powerful. And with social media, word of mouth is no longer local.

“Nothing is local anymore,” Domino’s spokesman Tim McIntyre says (in USA Today). “That’s the challenge of the Web world. Any two idiots with a video camera and a dumb idea can damage the reputation of a 50-year-old brand.”

Tags: Conover, Digg, Domino's, Domino's video, Facebook, franchise, MySpace, social media, StumbleUpon, Twitter, viral video, word-of-mouth marketing, Yelp

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 16th, 2009 at 1:35 pm and is filed under Blogging, business law, Consumer Law, social media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.