Although it’s been stated that online marketing can help a company make a name for itself and grow its business, one established company is learning that it can also use it to try to improve its image after some bad PR.
Earlier this month videos surfaced on YouTube showing workers at a North Carolina Domino’s location tampering with food. Although the offending video has been removed from YouTube, the damage appears to have been done for the pizza chain as a Google search for "dominos" results in links to the video and articles written about the incident.
However, Domino’s appears to have come out on an online media blitz to inundate the web with positive content to help remove this week’s scandal from the internet.
In addition to posting a response to the incident on YouTube from Domino’s president Patrick Doyle, the company created a Twitter account on Wednesday and has been frantically posting since.
Its first tweet included a link to the Domino’s corporate page which said the workers in the videos had been fired and arrested and asked others to re-tweet the message.
Tim McIntyre, vice president of corporate communications at Domino’s, told PR Week that the company is in the process of holding internal meetings to figure out how to use social media and search engine optimization to improve its image.
But some say it might be too late for the company to make drastic improvements.
"Domino’s late start and uneven presence in all the social media places that count have cost them valuable time, and it could be for naught if they slack off now rather than pressing their media onslaught," said Noah Mallin on SearchViews. " …[O]ver time SEO can help make sure that searches for stuff like "disgusting Dominos" or "Dominos delivery" come up with company controlled pages – the bad stuff can keep ranking for years down the line."
