"On the road to political extremism"

"On the road to political extremism"

"Very interesting commentary about Jon Stewart's/Colbert's political rally "to restore sanity," written by an Australian business prof who is a visiting prof at Harvard University.    He described the rally as a caricature of political rallies, which is not surprising. 

I really like his statement:
"It is the rule that disproves the exception. For while reasonableness brought in the crowd, extremism - even overtly false extremism - kept their attention for three hours. While other news organisations in the US would not be as overt, they are playing on the same things to drive demand. In fact, reasonableness only has a chance of being entertainment in an environment where extremists are taken seriously."

Did any of you watch/attend this rally?  What was your impression?

Politics In The Social Media Age: How Tweet It Is

I saw this story about politics and social media on NRP and thought I'd share. It talks about how many politicians are using social media to keep constituents and the media up to date.

The article says, "There is much talk among the panelists of 'authenticity' — the notion that a candidate who sends out her own online messages and interacts with voters electronically is perceived as more real than a candidate who doesn't, or who leaves the tasks up to staff members." In my opinion, it's very important for politicians to jump on the social media bandwagon. It's a quick and easy way for them to get their message out to a lot of people.

The article is pretty interesting and also gives some examples of "well-wired" politicians.

Domino's Pizza Blog Post

Katie Roberts-Kremer

Heather Smith

Kirsten Carlson

Emily Williams

Group Case Study

Domino’s Pizza

1. Situational Analysis

a. Brief History:

Domino’s received an unexpected blow to their brand in April of 2009. Two Dominos’ employees, Kristy Hammonds and Michael Setzer, who worked at a store in the small town of Conover, North Carolina recorded a video of the two using unsanitary and frankly disgusting means of preparing food they later delivered to customers. The video shows the employees passing gas onto a sandwich, putting cheese into their nostrils and then placing it on a sandwich, sneezing into the food, and bragging about other disgusting things they do to food. This video was leaked and went public via YouTube and Domino’s reputation was immediately stained.

In response to the all of the controversy, Domino’s President, Patrick Doyle released his own YouTube video. The video has been criticized because he is obviously reading from a script and he barely looks at the camera. The two employees were fired and charged with one felony count of distributing prohibited foods each. Hammonds was a registered sex offender and had other previous charges, Domino’s is also being criticized for their hiring policies. They responded by stating they will be revaluating their hiring policies and will make them stricter.

Domino’s also has recently come out with new commercials where they respond directly to customers’ complaints about their food along with commercials promoting their new, revamped menu.

b. Key Stakeholders:

Internal:

· Employees

· President, Patrick Doyle

· Shareholders

· Franchise Owners

External:

· Customers

· United States Department of Health

· Competitors (pizza restaurants such as Pizza Hut, Papa John’s, Round Table, Sbarro, and Little Caesars)

c. Political, Social, Economic, and Cultural Factors

Political:

The Domino’s Pizza video scandal brings to light several legal issues, food safety being among the most important. For a national chain who sells nearly 1 million pizzas each day, any food safety or health issue can be devastating. The images of employees making sandwiches and pizzas with blatant disregard to food safety standards as well as intentionally contaminating food products were a serious blow to Domino’s reputation. Following the YouTube video, Domino’s instituted a more stringent food safety training regimen for employees and has commented on the importance of food safety in the food production process as well. Ultimately, it is up to Domino’s customers to decide whether the company has done enough to reassure them of the safety and sanitation of the chain’s food.

Economic:

The economic effects of the YouTube video were twofold: the company’s reputation and share value suffered and the franchise in which the video took place suffered. Though often overlooked in respect to a scandal that affects the overall brand, the local Domino’s Pizza where the video was filmed was forced to complete a health inspection and dispose of hundreds of dollars of products. Moreover, Domino’s shares dropped by 10% in less than a week.

Cultural:

The impact of the YouTube video was detrimental not only to the company’s external reputation but also its internal reputation. While customers are of course the most important people to please in food service, there is no service without employees. For a nation-wide company like Domino’s, maintaining an employee culture of trust, respect, and fun is among their top priorities. However, when even two of the many thousand Domino’s employees break with the mission of the company, everyone pays the price. Of course, as a result of their behavior the employees featured in the video were fired and charged with delivering prohibited foods. But what about the other employees? The question for Domino’s is how to maintain (or re-establish) a culture of trust and mutual respect between employee and management without infringing upon the employees sense of privacy and individual responsibility. No one wants to work with Big Brother watching over their shoulder 24/7.

Social:

Social Media lies at the heart of both the problem and solution to the Domino’s Pizza scandal. An otherwise unremarkable yet unpleasant event became a national PR nightmare when the employees chose to post their video on youtube.com. In a matter of days, the video had had over 1 million hits. Domino’s had several choices in how to respond to the scandal and ultimately, chose the same route that got them into the trouble in the first place. By responding through YouTube videos and Twitter (@dpzinfo), rather than press releases and other traditional avenues, Domino’s was able to reach their target audience as quickly as the initial problematic video had. In addition, by adding Twitter to their initial response, and eventually their ‘showusyourpizza.com’ ads, has created a two-way symmetrical response to the issue, allowing their customers to engage in dialogue with the company.

d. Potential Solutions:

Domino’s Pizza could have better handled their response to the video scandal by:

1. Responding immediately rather than waiting several days in hopes that the video buzz might diminish. Better crisis management might have helped Domino’s to quiet the issue before it became nation-wide news. Their late response seemed to show their lack of preparation for a crisis such as the video.

2. One solution suggested by Brandseye.com was to utilize a program designed to monitor a company’s online reputation. While certainly a reasonable suggestion, perhaps a better method of issues management would be instituting a company policy on social media that both embraces it and outlines particular rules to guard against abuse.

Questions:

1. Domino’s has recently done a new marketing and commercial campaign illustrating that they are responding to peoples’ complaints and dissatisfaction with their pizzas. This campaign does not directly address the YouTube video. Do you think Domino’s should directly address the issue in a nationwide campaign? Why or why not?

2. Beyond dealing with the negligent employees, what responsibility does Domino’s have to address the issue of food safety in their restaurants? Has your perception of food quality been tainted by rumors and/or leaked videos such as this?

3. Do you think that this situation would have been so publicized if it wasn’t for social media? Could the situation have been avoided if Domino’s had a previously established code regarding social media use in the workplace?

How To Make A Viral Video

I find it fascinating how popular viral videos can become. It is interesting to see how fast videos become internet sensations through sites like youtube.com. Perhaps one of the first instances of a video going viral was with OK Go’s music video for “Here it goes again.” This video first showed up more than 4 years ago and currently has almost 53 million views. OK Go has had little mainstream success but they are huge internet sensations. One of their videos just released this month already has 6 million views. Here is a CNN interview done with OK Go discussing how to make viral videos. If you don’t have time to read the whole interview here is a short except on how OK Go views the Internet as freeing and revolutionary.

CNN: How has the internet changed the way you communicate with your audience?

It's difficult to answer the question because embedded in the question is this idea that the internet is this separate space now. And it's hard for me to see the digital space as a distinct annex of physical space. Everything you will do to make this story will go through a computer.

All of my communication is online, half of our art has been online, and so our social spaces are all online. It's like the internet has changed our communication with our fans in the way it has changed our communication with everyone in the world.

However, trying to look at it in sort of a more traditional light, it's been completely revolutionary and completely freeing. We never particularly wanted to have our work mediated by anyone else ... The internet has allowed for us to sidestep a lot of those [corporate, radio, TV and record label] agendas by making stuff that we can give directly to people, and by relying on a smaller number of people to care more rather than getting more and more bodies through the line at Wal-Mart.

NPR firing a PR crisis?

Ok, so I'm going to bring it up because I love controversy. What do you all think about NPR's firing of Juan Williams over his comments on The O'Reilly Factor show on Fox's cable news channel?

So far, think that NPR has done little to address it. I've mainly heard criticism directed toward it for this action, but some people applauded it as well. I read the statement they released about why they fired Williams, but haven't seen many other PR measures. I didn't even see anything about it on their Twitter page (compared to other news outlets I follow who tweeted articles addressing it). The NPR ombudsman did publish a report noting that NPR handled the firing poorly (does this count as PR? It was a very good report, but longer than most people have the stamina/perseverance to read online I think).

It seems that major media outlets seem to use a strategy of ignoring PR issues when they arise (i.e. my group's case study of The New York Times) instead of addressing them. Is this a good strategy?

I think that strategy has its pros and cons. It could help the issue not become a bigger deal by keeping quiet about it, but it also means that other people have the opportunity to frame it and speak for it when the media outlet chooses to keep quiet about it.

This issue is really messy. It involves deeper layers of nationalism, identity, history, etc. But how could NPR have addressed this better?

It was also interesting to note that NPR cited its decision as based on its code of ethics. Perhaps this shows the importance of an organizational code of ethics. In times of controversy or questionable procedures, turning to the code of ethics may help a company chart a principled course it can stand on amid criticism.

Companies Using Twitter to Announce Jobs

I can't say this really surprised me, but with all of our class discussion about social media I found it interesting that companies are now using Twitter to announce holiday jobs. UPS, Crate and Barrel, and Kohls are some of the companies that are using Twitter to recruit holiday staff. Interestingly, Crate and Barrel said that they didn't receive nearly as many inquires as they had anticipated. I wonder if it's because Twitter isn't narrowly focused, so the chance that people in Edina Minnesota saw the tweet is small, or if people just aren't aware that they can use Twitter to look for jobs.

The article talks about how job seekers need to start using Twitter more often to look for job openings because it enables them to find out about them first, giving them a better chance at getting the job. I'm sure that in the future, more companies and job seekers will start utilizing Twitter.

Here's the article.

BP's questionable PR strategies in the Gulf Region

This is an excellent interview by Amy Goodman on DemocracyNow with Terry Tempest Williams, writer and environmentalist, that includes so many untold stories of BP's efforts (supported by Homeland Security) to silence those who are speaking out, as well as to curb media coverage of the magnitude of damage to the environment and people in the Gulf Region.    What are the ethical issues that arise from these stories?  What does BP say about these issues?  What would be a more ethical (and more effective in the long run) strategic PR response to these ongoing issues?

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/10/21/6_months_since_bp_oil_spill