Communication plan
LO1: How to select the proper communication plan?
1.1 Types of communication plans
Business communication plans transfer information from one individual or group to another. Though the definition sounds simplistic, each type of plan has a specific purpose in a business and may not receive frequent use. Different types of business communication plans are internal, external, and crisis, with the latter possibly a mix of the first two. Companies put these plans into place so there is a constant flow of information among all parties in or related to the company. Many users are involved with sending and receiving communication, making these plans very important.
Internal business communication plans represent messages intended only for those stakeholders inside a business. These are often owners, managers, and employees. Different types of communication methods may be present with this plan, such as telephone, e-mail, conferences, or face-to-face meetings and reviews. The communication plan receives frequent use as the stakeholders pass messages back and forth through the system. Outside users are rarely active in this communication plan as message content may be highly secretive and contain sensitive business information.
External business communication plans are simply the opposite of the above plan; external stakeholders needing information use it. Though it may sound that internal and external business communication plans carry the same information at times, this is not always so. For example, publicly held companies often have a specific individual or office that handles all external communication or messages. This allows for a united front as companies go through difficult business periods or need to send messages to external groups. Owners and executives are often highly involved with these plans to ensure no negative messages or tones are sent to outside stakeholders.
A crisis communication plan is a special form that works only during a crisis experienced by the business. All business communication plans have some form of a crisis element. A business may go through many different crises during its lifetime, though not all situations are crises for all companies. One internal crisis, for example, may be a sudden lack of natural resources. The company then needs to communicate to internal stakeholders how the company and its elements will respond to this crisis and maintain normal business operations.
Having crisis business communication plans in place allows a company to create a mixed communication channel. This ensures that a company can communicate its responses to crises to both internal and external stakeholders effectively. Again, this allows a united communications front and creates stability during a difficult time.
Source: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-the-different-types-of-business-communication-plans.htm
Important things to remember for every communication plan
A Strategic Communications Plan Should Have Internal And External Components
An internal communications plan is for everyone who has ever been involved in the planning of your initiative. This includes people such as all of your foundation staff and board members who have been involved conceptualizing and developing the initiative, planning team members, advisory council members, the community members who have ever participated in planning meetings, and other involved stakeholders. Internal communications strategies for those most closely involved in current planning efforts, such as an e-newsletter to keep all the planning team members appraised of what each other is doing, will be very different from strategies to connect with broader stakeholders who don’t yet know about your efforts, such as policymakers, media, and community members.
The external communications plan is for anyone who hasn’t been involved, but who needs to be. This might be the people who will benefit from your initiative, business, schools, policymakers, other funders who have not yet committed funds, community providers who have not yet been involved, the media, etc. It also includes those who might be opposed to your efforts.
13 Components of a Communications Plan
A strategic communications plan should include the following:
1. Measurable goals and strategies – The communications plan should include clear and measurable goals and strategies. These goals should be as specific as possible. Avoid generic goals such as “raise awareness”, and make sure communications goals are realistic and can be accomplished with the human and financial resources available.
2. Target audiences
3. Identification of the message “frame” – The plan should describe how the initiative should be framed (e.g., “education will lead neighborhood residents to economic opportunity”). It should also identify what people’s current frame is (e.g., “schools in this neighborhood are horrible and students are getting a terrible education”), how you can communicate with them within their current frame, and how you will move them to the new frame.
4. Key messages and persuasive strategies – As mentioned above, while there might be one overarching message, different audiences will need different key messages. You will also want to identify the readiness of each audience to hear and act upon these messages, their core concerns so that you can ensure your messages are meaningful to them, and the messenger to share your message. Additionally, there are different types of persuasion, and the plan should address how each persuasive strategy will be used to gain support. For example, rational persuasion uses technical data and logical arguments, while emotional persuasion uses values and emotion, such as photographs of happy children, to convey messages.
5. Opportunities and barriers for reaching key audiences – The plan should identify different strategies for and opportunities to reach key audiences with your messages. It should also identify barriers and how those barriers can be overcome.
6. Communications activities – For each goal and strategy, there will be a series of communications activities, or tactics, identified. Each activity/tactic should have a clear timeline, communications vehicles, people assigned to them, and a budget.
7. Communications vehicles – Within each goal, strategy and tactic there will be different communications vehicles to use to carry your message to your audience. This includes face-to-face meetings, telephone calls, e-newsletters, blogs, grassroots mobilization, policy reports, op-eds, community meetings, etc.
8. Crisis communications – The communications plan should include how to manage and communicate about any crises that might arise.
9. Implementation plan – The communications plan should be accompanied by an implementation plan. This should be a very clear road map that lays out specific timelines, deadlines, activities, who is responsible, etc.
10. Monitoring and evaluation – You will want to track and measure success, so each communication goal and strategy should be measurable and evaluated. That way you can also make adjustments if certain strategies and tactics aren’t working.
11. Timing considerations – A realistic time horizon for a strategic communications plan is three years. However, the communications plan should include immediate-, short-, and long-term goals and strategies. The implementation plan should help in determining how to prioritize and roll out the different communication components, strategies and tactics. Since your initiative will have immediate communications needs, you should identify what needs to happen immediately and what are some “low-hanging fruit” tactics that could be implemented to meet those needs, even before a full communications plan is developed. Some ideas include:
12. Staffing – If a foundation has internal communications staff, it is very helpful for them to begin participating early in planning conversations. This enables them to understand the initiative so that they know how to communicate about it, and also ensures that planning happens with a communications lens. You might need to retain a communications consultant. It will be helpful to have one person/firm responsible for creating a communications plan, and that this could be in-house staff or a consultant. Whoever creates the plan should be someone with experience conducting strategic communications planning, preferably with complex, community-based initiatives.
One communications consultant is unlikely be have the skills, experience and capacity to meet all of your communications needs. The foundation could hire a consultant to develop the plan, and that consultant will likely be able to implement some parts of the plan but not all of them. That consultant should be able to help the foundation identify other vendors to help with specific pieces, such as media relations, advertising, community outreach, etc. That consultant could even serve as a coordinator/implementation manager of all the communications-related work. Someone needs to be identified to manage the implementation of the communications plan. You can find communications consultants who specialize in philanthropy and nonprofits through the National Network of Consultants to Grantmakers and the Communications Network.
13. Budget – There should be a detailed communications budget developed as part of the plan. This way, choices can be made regarding where to focus limited resources. Like anything, communications can get very expensive, and the plan needs to match the resources available.
Source: http://putnam-consulting.com/philanthropy-411-blog/philanthropy/effective-comm-planning/
1.2 Steps of the different communication plans
Basic eight step model
To develop a plan for communication of any sort, you have to consider some basic questions:
The answers to these questions constitute your action plan, what you need to do in order to communicate successfully with your audience. The remainder of your communication plan, involves three steps:
Communication is an ongoing activity for any organization that serves, depends upon, or is in any way connected with the community. The purpose, audience, message, and channels may change, but the need to maintain relationships with the media and with key people in the community remain. As a result, an important part of any communication plan is to continue using and revising your plan, based on your experience, throughout the existence of your organization.
One way to look at planning for communication is as an eight-step process.
The steps are:
1. IDENTIFY YOUR PURPOSE.
What you might want to say depends on what you’re trying to accomplish with your communication strategy. You might be concerned with one or a combination of the following:
2. IDENTIFY YOUR AUDIENCE.
Who are you trying to reach? Knowing who your audience is makes it possible to plan your communication logically. You’ll need different messages for different groups, and you’ll need different channels and methods to reach each of those groups.
There are many different ways to think about your audience and the ways they could best be contacted. First, there’s the question of what group(s) you’ll focus on. You can group people according to a number of characteristics:
Another aspect of the audience to consider is whether you should direct your communication to those whose behavior, knowledge, or condition you hope to affect, or whether your communication needs to be indirect. Sometimes, in order to influence a population, you have to aim your message at those to whom they listen – clergy, community leaders, politicians, etc.
3. THE MESSAGE.
When creating your message, consider content, mood, language, and design.
Content
In the course of a national adult literacy campaign in the 1980’s, educators learned that TV ads that profiled proud, excited, successful adult learners attracted new learners to literacy programs. Ads that described the difficulties of adults with poor reading, writing, and math skills attracted potential volunteers. Both ads were meant to make the same points – the importance of basic skills and the need for literacy efforts – but they spoke to different groups.
You should craft your message with your audience in mind; planning the content of your message is necessary to make it effective.
Mood
Consider what emotions you want to appeal to.
The mood of your message will do a good deal to determine how people react to it. In general, if the mood is too extreme – too negative, too frightening, trying to make your audience feel too guilty – people won’t pay much attention to it. It may take some experience to learn how to strike the right balance. Keeping your tone positive will usually reach more people than evoking negative feelings such as fear or anger.
Language
There are two aspects to language here: one is the actual language – English, Spanish, Korean, Arabic – that your intended audience speaks; the other is the kind of language you use – formal or informal, simple or complex, referring to popular figures and ideas or to obscure ones.
You can address the language people speak by presenting any printed material in both the official language and the language(s) of the population(s) you’re hoping to reach, and by providing translation for spoken or broadcast messages.
The second language issue is more complicated. If your message is too informal, your audience might feel you’re talking down to them, or, worse, that you’re making an insincere attempt to get close to them by communicating in a way that’s clearly not normal for you. If your message is too formal, your audience might feel you’re not really talking to them at all. You should use plain, straightforward language that expresses what you want to say simply and clearly.
Channels of communication
What does your intended audience read, listen to, watch, engage in? You have to reach them by placing your message where they’ll see it.
4. RESOURCES.
What do you have the money to do? Do you have the people to make it possible? If you’re going to spend money, what are the chances that the results will be worth the expense? Who will lose what, and who will gain what by your use of financial and human resources?
Your plan should include careful determinations of how much you can spend and how much staff and volunteer time it’s reasonable to use. You may also be able to get materials, air time, and other goods and services from individuals, businesses, other organizations, and institutions.
5. ANTICIPATE OBSTACLES AND EMERGENCIES.
Any number of things can happen in the course of a communication effort. Someone can forget to e-mail a press release, or forget to include a phone number or e-mail address. A crucial word on your posters or in your brochure can be misspelled, or a reporter might get important information wrong. Worse, you might have to deal with a real disaster involving the organization that has the potential to discredit everything you do.
It’s important to try to anticipate these kinds of problems, and to create a plan to deal with them. Crisis planning should be part of any communication plan, so you’ll know exactly what to do when a problem or crisis occurs. Crisis plans should include who takes responsibility for what – dealing with the media, correcting errors, deciding when something has to be redone rather than fixed, etc. It should cover as many situations, and as many aspects of each situation, as possible.
6. STRATEGIZE HOW YOU’LL CONNECT WITH THE MEDIA AND OTHERS TO SPREAD YOUR MESSAGE.
Establishing relationships with individual media representatives and media outlets is an important part of a communication plan, as is doing the same with influential individuals and institutions in the community and/or the population you’re trying to reach. You have to make personal contacts, give the media and others reasons to want to help you, and follow through over time to sustain those relationships in order to keep communication channels open.
The individuals that can help you spread your message can vary from formal community leaders – elected officials, CEOs of important local, businesses, clergy, etc. – to community activists and ordinary citizens. Institutions and organizations, such as colleges, hospitals, service clubs, faith communities, and other health and community organizations all have access to groups of community members who might need to hear your message.
7. CREATE AN ACTION PLAN.
Now the task is to put it all together into a plan that you can act on. By the time you reach this point, your plan will already be essentially done. You know what your purpose is and whom you need to reach to accomplish it, what your message should contain and look like, what you can afford, what problems you might face, what channels can best be used to reach your intended audience, and how to gain access to those channels. Now it’s just a matter of putting the details together – actually composing and designing your message (perhaps more than one, in order to use lots of channels), making contact with the people who can help you get your message out, and getting everything in place to start your communication effort. And finally, you'll evaluate your effort so that you can continue to make it better.
8. EVALUATION.
If you evaluate your communication plan in terms of both how well you carry it out and how well it works, you’ll be able to make changes to improve it. It will keep getting more effective each time you implement it.
And there’s really a ninth step to developing a communication plan; as with just about every phase of health and community work, you have to keep up the effort, adjusting your plan and communicating with the community.
Source: communications handbook by Pinnacle Public Relations Training LINK
Source: Communications Planning: Getting the Right Messages Across in the Right Way, by Mindtools.com
Special focus on a marketing communication plan
Gaining awareness is one of the first steps in the sales process and the main focus of your marketing communications (marcom) strategy. Getting to know your audience, crafting your message and tracking results are only a few pieces of the puzzle.
Why all the fuss? An effective marketing communications plan results in a better, more consistent brand experience. The end result: more sales.
1. The Better You Know Your Audience, the Better You (& Your Team) Can Appeal to their Interests
All successful marketing efforts begin with a thorough understanding of your audience. Start by analyzing your current clients and why they chose your products or services. Don't have enough data to get the full picture? Put a research plan in place to help fill in any gaps relating to demographics, purchase patterns and other insights into when, where, why and how people purchase your products.
2. Uncover Your Unique Selling Proposition
Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is the main benefit that, when communicated effectively, drives sales of your product or service. It focuses on a unique problem that you solve better than anyone else. Your USP must be compelling and strong enough to move people to act. Your USP will be central to all of your marketing communications, so don't take this step lightly.
3. Sharpen Your Brand Look and Feel
From logos to business cards and marketing collateral, your brand must speak to the customer in a contemporary, relevant manner. It needs to support your operational USP and accurately represent your market position – don't mislead your audience by creating a marquee brand if you're aiming to be a low-cost option. Be honest, sincere and true to the heart of your business.
4. Ensure that All Messaging is Consistent
While most people think of logo and stationary when it comes to branding, your brand voice is equally important. A good place to start is to generate a few key positioning statements to feature in your communications. Start with a tagline, single sentence version and then a standard short paragraph. Try spooling out a handful of key messages (up to 5) that your company should be communicating (note that they cannot all be in all places). Outline key descriptive words to use and not use, and make sure that your new messaging standards are adhered to in all future communications.
5. Choose Your Marketing Mix
With all of the recent advancements in online marketing, there are more ways to communicate than ever before. Every industry and brand is unique, so there is no standard marketing mix that will work for everyone. The key is to understand your options, and choose a media mix that fits your audience (where do they spend their time / attention), budget and marketing communications goals.
6. Establish Marcom Success Measurements (Metrics)
Whatever the medium and message, ensure that your communications are measurable. Whether it's email open rates, social media exposure or direct mail response rates, establish key communications goals and put systems in place to chart your success. Tie this data in with sales metrics to get a true sense of what's working and what's not.
7. Manage Leads and Client Data
You know your audience, you've built your brand and you've told your story. People are interested – now what? A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system is a database of your contacts (customers, prospects, others) that allows you to organize information (contact info, records, files, calls, emails, etc) to streamline and scale sales and marketing processes. This will help you better understand how clients move through the sales funnel and help you close more leads.
Successful marketing communications efforts are much more than a shot in the dark. Each of these seven steps needs to be explored to the fullest in order to gain the greatest return on investment possible.
Source: http://www.6pmarketing.com/articles/branding-science/72-marketing-strategy/359-7-steps-to-develop-an-effective-marketing-communications-strategy
Marketing communications planning framework by Chris Fill
Source: Fill, C. (2013) Marketing Communications, 6th edn, Harlow: Pearsons
Internal communication plan
1. Clarify your purpose
For specific communications, get specific about your purpose. For example, is the message being delivered for information only, to generate feedback, to generate new ideas, or is a specific action required?
2. Clarify your desired outcome(s)
Do you need a response in writing by a certain time or prior to a particular event? Are you seeking a list of 3-5 new ideas? How specific can you reasonably be about how you will define success? This step is essential for identifying the benchmarks and metrics you’ll use to evaluate your results.
3. Know your audience
4. Develop the strategy
5. Develop the message
Now that you’ve identified and ‘profiled’ your audience, develop your message. It should be short, clear, compelling, and ideally, visual. It is very likely positive – focused on what the team is for, rather than what it’s against. If you deliver the message through stories, it will almost certainly be ‘sticky’ – both memorable and high-impact.
6. Deliver the message
Effective communications are really about delivering the right message, to the right audience, at the right time – often many times. So plan it out. Here are some elements to think about:
7. Evaluate and learn
Don’t just identify metrics for tracking progress – revisit them on a regular basis. Use what they teach you. Build evaluation into monthly and quarterly reviews, for example. And include it as a routine practice or group norm: for instance, at every staff meeting, include a standing agenda item that has the team reflect on its internal communications. Include tracking questions on annual internal organizational surveys. Questions could be as simple as: How well are we communicating our organizational vision? How well are we keeping one another abreast of one another’s work and results? How are we doing with having “courageous’ conversations” in a timely, skillful way? How are we doing with email brevity and appropriateness? How are we doing with the preparation and use of well-crafted briefing notes? Insanity has been defined as “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Building in evaluation at every level of your communications will interrupt any bias toward activities and help teams focus on results. With routinized evaluation, your internal communications, and therefore your internal alignment and collective ability to get things done, will continually improve.
Source: http://suzannehawkes.com/2013/05/22/7-steps-to-creating-an-effective-internal-communications-plan/
1.3 Target audiences
Target audiences are the groups of people that you want to receive your message. Sometimes
the target audience can be a single, homogenous group of people. Other times you may have
multiple audiences.
Determining the target audience
Identifying the Target Audience
Audience Research
Source: http://www.reefresilience.org/coral-reefs/communication/developing-a-communication-strategy/identifying-the-target-audience/
2. How to implement a communication plan successfully?
Kellogg's case study
Research shows that children benefit from eating a healthy breakfast prior to the start of the school day. However, too often children have no breakfast at all or eat chocolate or crisps and a fizzy drink on their way to school.
This case study examines how Kellogg’s devised a plan to communicate the importance of breakfast to selected target audiences through a multi-platform campaign. This was in support of its ‘Help give a child a breakfast’ campaign launched in October 2011.
Kellogg’s is the world’s leading producer of cereals. Its products are manufactured in 18 countries and sold in more than 180 countries. Kellogg’s produces some of the world’s most easily recognisable brands such as Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, Coco Pops and Rice Krispies. For more than 100 years, Kellogg’s has been a leader in health and nutrition through providing consumers with a wide variety of food products.
Breakfast clubs
Kellogg’s has been active in supporting breakfast clubs in schools for many years, working with the education charity ContinYou, the experts on breakfast clubs. Breakfast clubs provide a healthy meal at the start of the day in a safe and friendly environment. They also provide a great opportunity for kids to play, learn and socialise with classmates.
Since 1998, this partnership has set up 500 breakfast clubs in schools across the UK. Interested schools have been supported with training on how to start a club and have received a start-up grant from Kellogg’s.
According to research by Kellogg’s, many schools have run into trouble with the funding of their breakfast club due to recent budget cuts by the UK government. Kellogg’s responded by putting a team together to create a communications plan which highlighted the importance of breakfast clubs to parents, schools, the UK government and the public.
Writing a communications plan
 The communication process involves transmitting information from a sender to a receiver. However, effective communication needs to ensure that the message has been not only received but also clearly understood. This is relevant whether the communication is internal or external. The message needs to be sent in a way that it will appeal to and be understood easily by the target receiver or audience. This involves selecting an appropriate format or channel to deliver the message.
Examples of media that may be used include a leaflet, a television advert and a personal letter. The feedback part of the process is vital as this is how the sender knows if the message has been received correctly.
For the message to be effective, barriers to communication (known as ‘noise’) need to be eliminated or reduced. Noise is anything that might distort the message or prevent the receiver getting or understanding the message. For example, noise might include using language or jargon that the receiver will not understand or using a channel such as email or the internet when the receiver does not have a computer.
Tailoring the message
A communications plan uses the same principles of tailoring the message and the delivery channel for a target audience. A communications plan also sets out the overall objectives to be achieved and the means by which these will be measured.
Businesses engage in both internal and external communication. Internal communication may involve transmitting messages to shareholders, senior managers, other employees or contractors. Communication externally may be to a range of stakeholders including customers, suppliers, the media, government or the wider public. In each case, the nature of the message and the format used may be tailored to suit the audience. An effective internal communications plan can help to give clear direction within the organisation and improve employee motivation. Externally, it can even change public opinion.
Background and purpose
Research commissioned by Kellogg’s showed that as many as 1 in 7 children in the UK do not eat breakfast and that up to 25% eat crisps, chocolate or fast food on the way to school. In addition, 1 in every 8 (around 3,000) breakfast clubs in the UK have closed due to government budget cuts and up to 45% of remaining clubs were at risk of closure.
Research with teachers showed that the majority believe that the lack of breakfast opportunities would lead to poorer academic results and worsening behaviour in schools. The purpose of the Kellogg’s campaign was to show its commitment to breakfast clubs in schools in the UK. The important messages that the campaign was aiming to get across were that:
- breakfast is important for people of all ages especially young people
Kellogg’s faced potential noise for its messages from different sources. At the time, the government spending review was high profile in the press which could have resulted in the Kellogg’s story being overlooked. In addition, other food companies also support breakfast clubs which could have led to confusion or dilution of its messages.
It also needed to make clear that this was not a marketing effort to promote Kellogg’s brands but a part of the company’s longstanding Corporate Responsibility programme. Corporate Responsibility involves understanding the impact the business has on the wider community and working to make that impact positive. Kellogg’s has been supporting breakfast clubs in schools and local communities for 14 years and has invested over £1.5 million to date.
Fitting the message to the audience
The Kellogg’s breakfast club campaign had a number of key objectives which depended on promoting the right messages to different audiences. Key aspects of the campaign were not only to get messages across about the benefits of breakfast and breakfast clubs, but also to raise funds for the clubs through the sale of Kellogg’s products and to make schools aware of the available funding from Kellogg’s to support their breakfast clubs.
In order to achieve these objectives, Kellogg’s devised a communication plan for internal and external stakeholders. The main internal stakeholders being targeted were Kellogg’s employees. They were encouraged to get involved through information posted on the company intranet (internal communication). Employees were also invited to attend a breakfast club in the atrium of the Kellogg’s building with two local primary schools and then visit breakfast clubs that received funding from Kellogg’s.
However, the campaign was primarily designed for the needs of external audiences. These included:
Using the right medium
In order to convey any message effectively to a targeted audience, the most suitable medium and channel needs to be used. For example, if a company wants to promote products with a mass market appeal to a wide audience, it might use well-scripted television advertising. To advertise a job opportunity for a finance director of a company, a business might place an advertisement in the Financial Times (or other financial and business-related publications).
Take, for example, the message that ‘Kellogg’s supports breakfast clubs’. How should Kellogg’s communicate this message to children and parents? Kellogg’s approach was to use a multiplatform campaign. This is an approach which communicates over a range of media, rather than using just one, in order to reach many different audiences.
The various campaign communications involved a mixture of formal and informal communications. Formal communications are through approved channels and so might include, for example, a company policy document or a press release. Kellogg’s formal communications included the letters sent to MPs.
In contrast, informal communication is more spontaneous and less structured, for example, a chat with colleagues over coffee. Informal communication can be very effective in a business as it has the advantage of being quicker and more direct. Kellogg’s face-to-face interactions at breakfast clubs and the briefing to mummy bloggers demonstrated a more informal approach to communication. The problem with informal communication is that it could result in rumours that can cause messages to be mistrusted or even convey inaccurate information.
Conclusion
Breakfast clubs provide a healthy meal at the start of the day in a safe and friendly environment. They also provide a great opportunity for kids to play, learn and socialise with classmates. Kellogg’s has long supported breakfast clubs and so planned a multi-platform approach to communicate key messages about the importance of breakfast and breakfast clubs to various audiences. The feedback to any communication is important to evaluate whether your messages are reaching the target audience effectively. Kellogg’s therefore carried out an evaluation of its campaign. Highlights include:
These results clearly indicate that Kellogg’s has communicated its messages effectively. The time taken in planning the communications through a multi-platform approach worked in relation to each of the targeted audiences. As a food company that takes its responsibility for nutrition seriously, Kellogg’s has maintained its commitment to write to and talk to key government officials to get the message over about the importance of breakfast for children. This highlights how effective communication is not just a one-off event but an ongoing cycle requiring evaluation and a response to feedback received.
Source: http://businesscasestudies.co.uk/kelloggs/devising-a-communications-plan/using-the-right-medium.html#axzz3pgtxakOK
Case study domino's pizza: crisis communication
Domino's YouTube Crisis: 5 Ways to Fight Back
The video clip is stomach-turning. A Domino's employee in Conover, N.C., is seen assembling sandwiches, spraying snot on them, sticking cheese up his nose before placing it on a piece of bread and passing gas on a slice of salami. The woman holding the camera narrates. "In about five minutes, they'll be sent out to delivery, where somebody will be eating these, yes, eating them. And little did they know that cheese was in his nose and that there was some lethal gas that ended up on their salami," she proclaims proudly. "That's how we roll at Domino's."
The woman, Kristy Hammonds, 31, uploaded the video on YouTube. In a matter of days, thanks to Twitter and other viral social media, the clip had been viewed more than a million times and Domino's had an instant crisis on its hands. (The original video has been removed, but copies are still easily available online.) Both Hammonds and the other employee in the clip, Michael Setzer, 32, have been fired from the pizza-delivery chain and now face felony charges for distributing prohibited foods. Hammonds and Setzer say the video was just a prank, and that the unsanitary food was never delivered.
The company did not publicly respond to the video immediately, hoping attention would subside. But when it became clear by mid-week that the controversy was only escalating, Domino's executives acted. The company posted an apology on its website and asked employees with Twitter accounts to tweet a link to it. The company also created its own Twitter account, @dpzinfo, to reassure consumers that this was an isolated incident. And Domino's U.S.A. president, Patrick Doyle, issued an apology on YouTube.
These moves do carry certain risks — the more you seek forgiveness, the more people discover you have sinned — but for the most part, brand experts give Domino's high marks for its response. "First of all, they handled it very well with the video response," says Pete Blackshaw, brand strategist for Nielsen Online. "It could have been a little bit quicker, but the company needed time to get its facts straight. It was near perfect."
That being said, Domino's is far from healed. "This is going to be a tough one," says Dodie Subler, founding partner of Tait Subler, a consulting firm. "Domino's is known for its excellent training program, but these guys broke the code of ethics. It will be hard for Domino's to recover." The worst part of a viral video crisis is that the clips live forever online. Says Blackshaw: "The Web never forgets."
So what is Domino's to do? Here are five ways to attack a corporate crisis in the digital age:
1. Blog. Blackshaw advises Domino's to create a blog on its website, where the company can highlight great deals, new marketing campaigns, and, yes, the fact that 99.9% of its employees do not spit on the food. "I don't want to overhype blogs, but they can serve as very powerful rapid response vehicles," says Blackshaw.
Domino's spokesman Tim McIntyre says the company had been discussing starting such a blog, even before this crisis hit, and is still debating how to approach it. "Who blogs?" asks McIntyre. "Is it our CEO, or our chief marketing officer? Do we take a team approach, or do we have one person who is the voice of Domino's?" However the company decides to proceed, now is the time to do it.
2. Go Back to Its Base. Whether they're pepperoni junkies or hungry college kids, Domino's customers are extremely loyal. And now more than ever, the company needs to tap into this crust-chomping base. Domino's can gather the names of all customers who have offered positive feedback over the last couple of years, and send those people a quick letter or e-mail saying: This incident is isolated, we appreciate your business and, please, encourage your friends to stick with us too. "Managing brand influencers is so critically important," says Blackshaw. "Domino's doesn't have the same evangelist level as a company like Apple, but their core consumers can move the needle." According to McIntyre, Domino's is in the process of employing this strategy.
3. Update Wikipedia. Blackshaw calls Wikipedia a "reputational broker," a gateway through which financial analysts, the media and even current and future customers come in contact with the brand. By late afternoon April 17, the Wikipedia entry for Domino's noted the following about the controversy: "In April 2009, videos depicting two Domino's employees, Kristy Hammonds and Michael Setzer, in Conover, North Carolina, tampering with customer food were uploaded to the YouTube video hosting service. Later, the duo was arrested and charged."
What's missing? "The Domino's video response," says Blackburn. "That's a crucial component of brand editing." Wikipedia's editors typically strike links to anything that smacks of propaganda, but says Blackshaw, "I'd be surprised if Wikipedia pushes back. A response from a Domino's executive to a major controversy is fair game." McIntyre says a Wiki-reply is "on the list."
4. Friend Google. If you searched for "Domino's" on Google on April 17, the video, entitled "Disgusting Domino's People," was the third result (the president's video apology, entitled "Disgusting Dominos People — Domino's Respond," was the fourth). If you searched for "Domino's and disgusting," the whole first page of results dealt with the incident. One link screams "Never Eat at Dominos Again." The company has to move more aggressively to cancel out the negative reinforcement in the Google results. Domino's could, for example, purchase ads from Google that would appear at the top right corner of the page of "Domino's" search results. The ad could say "Domino's Apologizes" and link to the video from the company executive. Another ad could highlight a new promotion or discount. Right now, that space is blank on the page. Why not fill it up with positive messages from the company? Domino's says it is considering this option.
5. Take a Commercial Break. Domino's is between ad campaigns. The recent commercials featuring CEO David Brandon in Washington promising customers a "bailout" via $5 Domino's pizza have stopped airing, and the company plans to unveil new commercials within the next week. Put them on hold, says Subler, the brand expert. "There's no need for mixed messages right now," she says. Her logic: Let things cool down for a few weeks. Introducing TV commercials for a new product may only serve to recall the incident. And people may wonder why the company isn't addressing the negative news head-on: Why is Domino's pushing a new product on us when we still feel traumatized by those two moronic employees?
Domino's won't be taking this advice. The ads are still on, no question, says McIntyre. "I can understand that train of thought," he says. "'Hey, make the whole thing go away. Wipe the brand from consciousness for a while.' But the other thought is that the more you maintain a sense of normalcy, the faster you'll get back to normal."
So the company is trying its best to move forward. Domino's can only hope that its customers let go of controversy as quickly as it likes its deliveries.
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Learning objectives (LO):
1. How to select the proper communication plan?
