Domino's Pizza will take a long time to recover from the brand damage caused by two not-so-bright employees in North Carolina who filmed themselves taking gross-out revenge on unwitting customers. Like the other clips in our list of the top five most damaging viral videos, it ended up seriously tarnishing the reputation of the company involved:
1. Domino's Pizza (April 2009): This week, the Domino's cheese-up-nose video became the latest entry to the list of clips that have done the most damage. Many mainstream media reports focused on the "Twitter storm" that spread news of the video rapidly. Trivia stat: Michael Setzer and Kristy Hammonds are 32 and 31 years old, respectively. Did they forget to grow up?
2. Cathay Pacific (February 2009): A woman who missed the boarding call for her flight at Hong Kong International Airport became hysterical, tried to rush the gate to the plane, and collapsed to the floor when she was unable to board the aircraft. An employee of Cathay Pacific Airways recorded the event on a cellphone and, stupidly, shared it. The airline apologized to the woman, but Cathay Pacific's peace offering of an upgrade to business class seemed skimpy compared to the damage to her reputation and that of the airline.
3. New York City Police Department (May 2008): A New York City cop, 22-year-old Patrick Pogan, shoved bicyclist Christopher Long off the road during a Critical Mass demonstration ride. A bystander's video recording undermined the police department's claim that Long had "deliberately steered his bicycle into the officer, causing both of them to fall to the ground." Pogan was reassigned to desk duty. [Update: Pogan resigned in Februrary 2009.]
4. Kentucky Fried Chicken/Taco Bell (February 2007): A Manhattan KFC/Taco Bell franchise was known by locals to be overrun by rats during off hours. The local Fox News affiliate's two-minute report was watched more than a million times after it reached YouTube.
5. Kramer (November 2006): Comedian Michael Richards, best known as Kramer from Jerry Seinfeld's TV show, lost his cool with a heckler during a live performance. Richards' bizarrely racist tirade incited audience members to walk out. TMZ's subtitled clip pulled in hundreds of thousands of viewers, and was replayed to millions more on TV, doing untold damage to the comedian's career. Richards awkwardly tried to explain himself to Dave Letterman, but in the end acknowledged that he had a lot of "personal work" to do.
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Comments
Your comments about Patrick Pogan (video #3) are not quite complete. He was actually fired from the police force and is now facing criminal assault charges. Maybe perjury, too. The victim of the assault is suing both Mr. Pogan and the NYPD.
Thanks, Sally. I'm going to stick with the New York Times' corrected report that says Pogan resigned, rather than being fired, in February 2009.
I work for a Dominos and what you two did is past disgusting!!!! I am glad to hear your getting the books thrown at you. It really takes a sick in the head person to do something like this.
Yeah and your stupidity really has put hurt on other stores. Thanks jackasses for causing me to lose money because of your ignorance, don't appreciate it at all. Not to mention the money everyone else is losing over this. The Company and its Employees. I am so thankful that I work with better team members than you two have ever thought about being. Should have fired chick just because she is lazy, maybe this wouldn't have happened. Supprised you kept your job as long or as short of time as you did. You ought to be banned for ever working in another food place. That goes for anyone that has done something this dispicable. That's all right karma is going to bite you in the ass for this. When it does I hope it bites back 10 fold.
Awesome list. Definitely right on. I just referenced the Critical Mass clip in blog post myself. I was talking about damaging virals - I remember I saw that video first on Break.com then it spread like crazy.
Pepsi had a video thats pretty damaging come out just a few days ago - it was posted on Break.com's homepage overnight but then taken down, which I think really impeded its quick "viral growth." The video definitely has that brand damaging potential, and it looks like Pepsi is doing some old fashioned PR tricks and trying to kill the story.
Here's the vid I'm talking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLmlNnfYDLA
If the Break version had been left on the homepage, the YouTube versions would have higher view counts, getting better awards on YT and organic discovery and discussion.
A little clarification - the video was titled "Pepsi Promotion Backfires with Fans" and is still hosted on Break.com, but was removed from the homepage. I talk about this with some commentary in my post at http://www.gettingspotted.com.
I really like the "re-tweet" green button and its positioning on these news articles. The Standard is the first blog/news site that I've seen use this so effectively... something about the color and positioning is just perfect. With twitter blowing up you can only assume more people start doing the same with their posts. Very cool.
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