Dominos CEO response to YouTube nastiness

April 17, 2009 By 1 Comment

Could Dominos have handled the YouTube disaster any better?


“It sickens me..” spits Patrick Doyle, US CEO of the Dominos Pizza franchise speaking of the YouTube video showing two employees farting and snotting on unsuspecting customers’ food.

Join the club, Patrick.

There’s real anger in Doyle’s video – currently standing at 329,000 views. How many the original video got is uncertain since it is no longer available.  I can’t help imagining the scale of the legal machinations at work behind the scenes from over the last few days of this uniquely modern PR terror strike.

What’s clear is that the situation forced Dominos Pizza to enter the world of social media -ready or not. In a few short days it has endured a baptism of fire and emerged on the other side, breathless but alive.  Doyle’s YouTube delivery was endearingly wooden but the outrage was real.

The incident seems to have – in true internet style – polarised opinion.  Judging by the comments on Doyle’s YouTube page this incident rallies the faithful and revolts the rest.

Could Dominos have responded any better?  Probably not.  Could they have monitored better?  Possibly.

The Great Dominos Pizza YouTube Disaster of 2009 is a clear demonstration of the power of social media and the importance of the three key elements of online reputation management: monitoring, evaluation and response.

Filed Under: ORM Tagged With: , , , ,

Twitter and ego

April 15, 2009 By 2 Comments

Do you use Twitter to boost your ego? Really, honestly?

Our social media are a brilliant reflection of our culture.  Meaning?  They’re shaped by our cultural obsession with fame and the need to be liked or loved by others.  ‘Hot or Not’, Facebook ‘friends’, ecademy contacts, newsletter subscribers, Twitter followers – they’re all about using popularity to feel good.

Do you use these things to feel good?  Honestly?  And would you admit if you did?

I ask the question because every now and then I notice myself getting sucked into caring about having subscribers or followers in this immaterial, time-devouring online world.  I notice how easily (if I’m not careful) I can find myself judging my success on the number of hits on my site.

These media are seductive because they play to the ego – the ‘mind-made’ sense of self (as Eckhart Tolle calls it) that is permanently incomplete and which permanently needs filling up with more, new, different.

I know that if your ego is using social media to boost your sense of self, it will also defend it savagely.

(Stands back waiting for the ‘Oh, lighten up, it’s just about connecting with friends….’ line)

:-)

Filed Under: critical approach to online media Tagged With: , , ,

Idiot’s guide to WordPress 2.7

April 14, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Thanks to Dave Coveney at Spectacula for this free idiot’s guide to WP 2.7

In my experience, open source software can suffer from a lack of sensible documentation.  Not surprising.  Would you want to spend day after day writing a big fat manual no-one’s going to pay you for?  Not bleedin’ likely.

Which makes Dave Coveney’s ‘WordPress 2.7 User Guide’ something of a find.

It’s worth downloading this if you’re starting out using WordPress – Dave’s tips will save you some headaches and a bit of time.

Those of us who have found out some of that stuff the hard way – we salute you!

Filed Under: blogging technique, how to Tagged With: , , , ,

Dominos pizza YouTube PR disaster?

April 14, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Dominos goes truly viral with a pair of unsavoury lackeys trying for their 15 minutes of YouTube fame

Well they’ll get it. Along with their marching orders.

It’s a pretty depressing watch.  It’s not exactly a PR disaster though.

Why not?

Because everyone already knows that fast food joints all over the world are full of disgruntled and unwilling lackeys shoving shit, snot and other nastiness into the food.

So on one level, it’s just the truth.  But there is a serious point here – as a Dominos spokesman points out:

“Any idiot with a webcam and an internet connection can attempt to undo all that’s right about the brand,” Mr. McIntyre said, adding that Dominos has 125,000 employees in 60 countries and a loyal following. “In the course of one three-minute video, two idiots can attempt to unravel all of that.”

That’s social media for you, folks.

Filed Under: WARNING!! Tagged With: , , , ,

Spotify Premium – I told you so

April 9, 2009 By 3 Comments

Too few people signing up to Spotify’s Premium service.  Why am I not surprised?

I hate to say ‘I told you so’ but I did.

Latest news is that Spotify are going down the ‘pay for download’ route.  Why?  Because they’ve discovered that their proposition doesn’t do it for the market.  That’s ‘mu:kaumedia Big Marketing Mistake No. 3 in action.

Instead of heralding the end of music ownership, Spotify now looks like it’s going to head off down an evolutionary dead-end to slug it out in some dank cave with it’s hairy rivals.

Pity.  What really interests me is how Spotify’s belief in the benefits of its premium proposition went unchallenged for so long.  And why it’s easier to change the entire monetisation model rather than create benefits that would appeal to the 2 million of us already enjoying the Spotify experience.

I like the Spotify interface and will continue to use the free service.  If Spotify can add £9.99 per month’s worth of irresistible benefit, I’ll buy.  It’s that simple.  Over to you, Spotify.

Filed Under: Big Marketing Mistakes Tagged With: , , , ,

Big Marketing Mistakes: No. 4

April 6, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Big Marketing Mistake No.4: be unable to say what you do in a single sentence

If someone asks you to say what the movie ‘Castaway’ was about (assuming you’ve seen it) you’d be able to do it…right?  What if they asked you to do it in one sentence?  Ok, I’ll give it a go. ‘Castaway’.  It’s about a guy who’s never got time for anything except work until a plane crash dumps him on a desert island for so long that his girlfriend gives him up for dead and marries someone else. Phew.

Easy? Actually it isn’t.  Try doing it with your favourite film.

If you found that hard, now try doing it for your business.  It suddenly gets even harder.  But there’s no getting away from it – you’ve got to be able to sum up what it is you do and quickly.  In a single sentence.  A text maybe.  A Tweet even.  What they call in business the ‘elevator pitch’.

Why do people find it so hard to say what they do?  Are they just unable to focus? Is it because they’re afraid of choosing one thing?  Or do they simply lack the confidence to put it into words?  The answer is probably all of the above and a lot more besides.  One thing’s for sure, you’re never going to learn how to do it if you don’t try.

One of the best ways to practice (and to discover if you don’t actually know what it is you do) is to get out there and do some business networking – especially the ‘breakfast’ kind.  You’ll get about a minute to tell the other people what is you do or make an arse of yourself trying.

Of course, you don’t have to practice saying exactly what it is you do – but don’t expect the work to flood in if you don’t.  I’ve learned the hard way that no matter how much they like you people can’t buy from you if they can’t work out what you’re selling.

Filed Under: Big Marketing Mistakes Tagged With: , , , , ,

Spotify Premium: is it worth the money?

April 4, 2009 By 24 Comments

After several months as a free Spotify user, the time has come to ask ‘Is the premium service worth it?’

As some visitors know, I’ve been a Spotify free-account user from the early days – since way, way back in December last year.  It’s turned out to be the perfect online form or radio station for me.  I’ve blogged about it enthusiastically and set up more than 400 new users from a steady stream of invites passed from Spotify HQ.

Update: Check out my review of Spotify Premium here

I describe the service in several ways: ‘the death of music ownership’; ‘iTunes as it was supposed to be’; ‘internet radio for the terminally lazy’ and so on.  What I’ve enjoyed most about Spotify is its perfect blend of ‘search’, ‘genre’ and ‘radio’ logic to create endless supplies of new experiences or sickly sweet meanderings down musical memory lane.

It’s internet usability that’s come of age – in the same way that the iPhone is the grown up version of mobile phoning.  Spotify – at present – is almost perfect.  Even the absence of the big, greedily-held catalogues (Pink Floyd, Beatles) is a plus.  Hey, I grew up gorged on that stuff.  It’s a breath of fresh air not to have it polluting the Spotify world.

But the big question is: how will Spotify monetise its service?  (Read: “will it survive so I can continue to enjoy it?”)

At present there are two models: an ad-supported free service and a £9.99 premium service.  Good news is that I’ve bought the ad-supported service 100%.  Great start Spotify, you’re more than half way there.  I’m fully on board.

Now what’s going to make me shell out the £9.99?  Err… nothing – except the desire to get rid of ads.  I don’t know about you, but I’m not hugely motivated by paying money for something to be taken away.  Unless it’s toothache or a tree in danger of falling on my house – in which case it becomes a grudge purchase.

Spotify – please take note.

The one thing that would make Spotify worth £9.99 to me is the ability to put mp3s on my iPhone / iPod.  That would fit in with my lifestyle rather than with the worries and fears of the record industry.

And that’s the crunch here.  Are the record companies ready to take the leap into the unknown?  The fact is they’re going to have to sooner or later.  The only question is whose hand are they going to be holding when they do?

From where I sit, it might as well be Spotify’s.

Filed Under: business insight, what do you think? Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Apple iPhone hands-free just works

April 2, 2009 By 7 Comments

The iPhone hands-free beats the tangled Sony Ericsson nastiness hands-down

Hands-free kits and me have never really got on very well.  I kept buying Jabras but just couldn’t get on with them.  All I can say is that I found them more trouble than they were worth.

And when something you paid £80 for gets tossed aside just a couple of months after you bought it, something’s not right.

And if bluetooths don’t work for you, all you’re left with is a wired hands-free.  The one that came with my Sony Ericsson was rubbish from the start.

The earbuds are the wrong shape and too big.  It’s like trying to push a plate in your ear.  The whole hands-free tangles itself into a bird’s nest as soon as you put it into your pocket. But at least the quality’s good.

For some reason, I bought another Sony Ericsson hands-free the other day – this time the version with a jack plug half way down its length so it comes apart into two pieces – and it’s even longer!  More wire to get impossibly tangled – which of course it did the moment I bought it and seconds before my phone rang.

I’d started to think that – like a toilet seat that an ordinary human being can change successfully – a usable hands-free was pretty much an impossibility.

Until I got an iPhone a few days ago complete with a a hands-free that doesn’t tangle, sounds great and just works.

Filed Under: review Tagged With: , , , , ,
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