With every business and company, you have to be aware of all of the potential crises and issues you may experience – even those that you feel have no chance of happening whatsoever. Not being proactive in addressing these types of behavior can lead to even bigger issues and manifest into a crisis situation.
Papa John’s recently experienced a crisis that could have certainly been avoided. A customer, Minhee Cho (who is also a communications professional in Manhattan) went to a Papa Johns and made her order, and when she got her receipt, it read that the order was for “lady chinky eyes.” Ms. Cho went and took a photo of the receipt and uploaded via Twitpic – which immediately got thousands of RTs and comments via Twitter.
Papa John’s immediately apologized via Twitter and issued the following statement: “The matter was addressed and discussed immediately with the guests on the spot; and a confirmation was provided that the employee was immediately dismissed for the individual behavior.”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PprzM__4nlc[/youtube]
Papa John’s has been very proactive via social media and was considered as one of the top emerging brands via social media just a few years ago. They have done a great job with integrating digital storytelling into their videos via YouTube as well as experiment with augmented reality applications. However, there are other similar incidents that emerged within the fast food industry and other brands that shows the risk of this type of behavior. Look at what happened with Domino’s and their YouTube crisis – employees across all levels of an organization are the face of the brand and they do represent the overall reputation of the company.
There are several key lessons from this case study. Employees are part of the brand – so they have to be educated and trained both in their job as well as how they present themselves off and online. Secondly, anyone can post anything online with a click of a button – and what is posted online is for the world to see. Anyone can create content to upload virtually that can be shared within their community – and impressions are immediately made by the actions taken by the corporation.
In summary, understanding that this situation could have been prevented is also something that should be recognized and incorporated into part of the crisis communications simulation training with new media. The crisis team for Papa John’s should review this case and adapt their plans for looking for any early warning signs in their various locations (training the managers to monitor employee behavior) and increase the communication and education opportunities internally across the various chain locations. It will be interesting to see how this eventually plays out – especially since the headquarters of Papa John’s is located here in Louisville.
Hope you all are having a great day.
Best Wishes,
Karen
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