Apr 16
Keeping the crisis local
The best way to control a crisis, I was told years ago by a veteran public relations professional, is to “keep it local.” His philosophy was that if you kept a lid on the crisis and let it play out locally, perhaps it wouldn’t become a national crisis. And those, he knew from experience, were the worst kind.
But, that was before YouTube, MyFace and Twitter. Today, keeping a crisis local, has gotten a lot more difficult.
Domino’s Pizza found that out recently when two of their employees did some disgusting things with the food in one of their restaurants, videotaped their actions and then put it on YouTube. Within a couple of days, more than a half-million people had viewed the video. By the time it was becoming legendary on the internet, the mainstream media got word of it and it started making the rounds on cable and finally broadcast news via The Today Show and others.
Employees characterized the stunt as a prank, and Domino's said the filthy food was never served. But a spokeswoman said the company "was not in a forgive-and-forget mood," the BBC reported. The chain has gone a step further, with the affected North Carolina franchise filing a criminal complaint against the ex-employees and police issuing a felony warrant for their arrest, according to the BBC.
Domino's apologized for the actions of "Michael" and "Kristy" and said the videos marred "the hard work performed by the 125,000 men and women working for Domino's" in the United States and all over the world.
Domino’s was praised for its swift, deliberate action, but could it keep the story local? No chance. Considering the popularity of the infamous video on the internet, I’m not sure there was any way Domino’s could have kept the work of its two moron workers within the environs of Conover, N.C.
The internet, as we have been discussing on crisismanagementforum.com, has changed the way events become crises and it has changed the way they are reported. In the early days of crisis management, PR people were often hired to keep a story out of the newspaper. With newspapers on the decline these days, that may not be difficult. But keeping the story off the internet? That may be next to impossible.
I’m still new to LinkedIn, but there must be dozens of forums there where stories like this are being discussed. YouTube, of course, is always waiting for a popular – even if disgusting – video. There are just too many opportunities and too many people to take advantage of those opportunities to keep the story local much of the time.
In the “old days” prior to the internet, we thought one way to keep the story local was to respond locally and respond quickly. That still works today, but only to an extent. It depends on the “disgust” factor sometimes and Domino’s had a very high factor when it came to disgusting. This was the kind of story that used to be fodder for grocery store tabloids. Today it’s the kind of stuff that feeds YouTube and the rest of the internet.
Today, I think you have to assume a bad story can end up on the internet and consequently on the morning news shows and the front page of the New York Times. And, I think you have to respond accordingly.
That fast, local reaction is still important. But it’s important to go beyond that. Domino’s responded on the internet as it was responding to the mainstream media. That’s important today.
It’s also important to make monitoring the internet a part of your overall monitoring of the news media. If you’re only subscribing to a service that monitors newspapers and television these days, you’re not monitoring all of the media, just part of it.
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10:42 AM Feb 7