There’s a difference

After mulling this over for the last couple of days I’ve decided that the story of a handful of Domino’s Pizza employees posting a video of them adding disgusting ingredients to pizzas (which they say were never actually delivered to customers) to YouTube is not actually a social media marketing story. It’s a human resources story.

Why?

We’re not dealing with customers opening their cardboard pizza boxes, finding snot on their pepperoni and subsequently posting pictures of it on Flickr and details on their discovery to Twitter. THAT would have been a social media marketing issue since it involves the customer experience and is spread via first hand accounts.

This, though, is about employee mis-behavior. All the company needs to say is that the employees have been fired and that it’s reviewing on-the-job behavior guidelines with all employees. It doesn’t need to respond to every blog post about the video. It doesn’t need to go into panic mode. Announce the offensive employees have been let go and be done with it.

Not everything that happens via social media tools requires a social media-based response. Sometimes the best course of action when you find your brand under fire is to catch your breath and consider what the core issue is and respond accordingly. That might be through social media channels – they certainly do increase the reach of your message – or it might be through the traditional media. But know what sort of issue you’re responding to first and you’ll be in a much better position.