When brands get thrown into the stream

It looks like Domino's pizza video is going to be the Dell Hell of the Twitter era.Brands have to look back to those old times - 2005 -- wistfully. After all, Dell had many indications it had problems with its laptops and irate customers out there. Even Jarvis could have been mollifed with some deft ego-stroking. Welcome to the real-time era, brands. While they're trying to figure out how to become a positive part of the stream, they're finding sometimes it's much easier to become a bad part of the stream. The Domino's pizza video surfaced yesterday. Today, this is what Google says about the Domino's brand, built over 50 years.

Comments

[Paull Young]

Ouch.

Will be interesting to see if it maintains that rank - frequently we see Google give prominence to new social media properties within keyword rankings.

Though, the amount of links and chatter about this will no doubt give it plenty of Google juice!

[ZuDfunck]

I wouldn't want to be the manager of that Store
I wouldn't want to be the dude who posted the Video
Hell I wouldn't want to be the dude at Dominoes who has to clean this up!
Never a fan of the brand
So I don't regret the loss
But Damn!
What a Mess

[Bob Knorpp]

We talk a lot about needing to listen to the social stream, but I think situations like this highlight the need for a social damage-control plan as well. Even a quick response wouldn't be enough to mollify outrage at a video like this. This is a full-on PR disaster in keeping with tainted product scandals. And demands "what if" response plans be in place.

[Alan Wolk]

To Paull's point, that's exactly what I was thinking: check back in a couple of weeks when this has died down and see where those videos land in the Google ranking.

Dell made lousy computers back then and "Dell Hell" was a systemtic problem.
Domino's seems to be quite popular and fairly well regarded (as a native NYer, I can't really consider it pizza, but that's my own personal bias.) So once this dies down, I suspect it'll just become a footnote: there's no reason for people to suspect that all Domino's stores are staffed by similar knuckleheads or that of the fast food enterprises staffed primarily by high school students, that Dominos has the monopoly on morons.

[Alan Wolk]

Wow. I was away, had not seen the original video, assumed they were high school kids. Learned this am that they were over 30. So scratch comment about high school kids. But still think Domino's has enough good will overall that this will be a blip.

[Ben Kunz]

Brilliant observation.

Wonder if Google's search algorithms need tweaking if a few days of social media buzz can shift the link prioritization so radically. Doesn't quite seem fair.

[Adam Kleinberg]

Gotta give Dominos credit. The post right after that on Google today is titled

"YouTube - Disgusting Dominos People - Domino's Responds" with a link to this video from the president of Dominos honestly and candidly addressing the video.

[Moonboots]

Evidently Nike and Reebok have given Vick the boot. In accordance to ESPN.com news providers, Nike suspended its lucrative contract with Michael Vick on Friday, whereas Reebok took the unprecedented step of stopping revenue of his No. 7 jersey. Likewise, Donruss, a serious buying and selling card organization pulled Vick from long term releases and Upper Deck eliminated autographed material from its on-line retailers.