The Spotlight Is Always On

Principle
Now that cameras are built into most cell phones and cheap video cameras are prevalent, candidates are discovering that their actions are monitored every time they’re in public (and often when they’re not).  And like political candidates, corporate brands are beginning to see the necessity of monitoring the online space for potentially damaging content.

Best Practice
Monitor your image constantly and respond promptly to positive and negative feedback online.  Assume that everyone has a camera.  In this new era of media, everyone is a publisher.

Context
During the era of traditional media, once the cameras stopped rolling at a conference or commercial taping, candidates could let down their guard without fear of being taped in embarrassing or potentially damaging situations. In the past when candidates addressed groups of supporters without media present, they could assume it was off the record.  As for large corporations, they alone had money enough to enter a message into a mass medium like TV or newspapers, so there were far fewer avenues for negative brand messages to emerge.

Case Studies
Tom Ingram, who managed the late stages of the winning 2006 campaign for Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), employed a “tracker” for the campaign whose sole responsibility was to follow opponent Harold Ford Jr. with a handheld video camera.

Ford staged a confrontation with Corker at Memphis’ Wilson Airport, where Corker was scheduled to give a press conference on ethics. When Corker arrived at the airport, Ford approached with television cameras, microphones, and Corker’s tracker in tow.

Ingram said his tracker taped the entire drama and sent it back to Corker campaign headquarters. [i] Within hours, Ingram said, the Corker camp had produced a video that removed potentially awkward moments and highlighted the most flattering parts of the encounter. The team then posted the video to YouTube with the title: “Memphis Meltdown.”

 “Who won? At the scene, Ford clearly dominated proceedings with his quips, thrusts, and mugging as much as by his statements,” Memphis Flyer columnist Jackson Baker wrote about the incident. “…On TV, however, Corker’s resolute and terse termination of the encounter was the sort of image that may grow larger in the collective memory of the event.”[ii]  Baker was prescient in his thought about the video migrating to TV, as clips of the encounter were later broadcast on national news programs.

Ingram said the event easily could have been cast the other way, if Ford had employed a “tracker.” “I’d have called it, ‘Corker Runs Away’ if I was doing it from his point of view,” Ingram said.

Just as online videos can be used for the advantage of a candidate or product, the democratic nature of the medium can create quandaries for corporations.  Domino’s Pizza had to run damage control after an employee at a North Carolina franchise posted a video of a coworker deliberately contaminating food about to be delivered to a customer.[iii]

Once on YouTube, the video was viewed more than 1 million times before the offending employee effected the video’s removal on copyright grounds.[iv]  The employees were fired, sued, and charged with felonies, and Domino’s USA President Patrick Doyle issued his own video apology for the employees’ actions.  While Doyle’s video has been viewed more than 750,000 times and the original video of the incident has been removed, online video of local news reports showing the original YouTube clip are still live on the site.  Furthermore, the franchise where the incident occurred went out of business in September, citing lost sales due to the video.[v]  Domino’s did not respond immediately, instead hoping the negative attention would wane as quickly as it usually did in pre-Internet crises—and while the pizza chain eventually was proactive in responding to events that were out of its control,  the damage to the brand was done.

 

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[i] Tom Ingram, interview by Three Ships Media, October 8, 2009.
[ii] Jackson Baker, “Corker vs. Ford: Who Won the Battle of Wilson Air?” Memphis Flyer, Oct 21, 2006, http://www.memphisflyer.com/memphis/corker-vs-ford-who-won-the-battle-of-wilson-air/Content?oid=1130659, accessed October 2009.
[iii] “Domino's Pizza Workers Who Videotaped Themselves Passing Gas on Food Face Felony Charges,” sourced to YouTube video clip, screen grab, accessed October 2009.
[iv] Stephanie Clifford, “A Video Prank at Domino’s Taints Brand,” The New York Times, April 15,2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/business/media/16dominos.html, accessed October 2009.
[v] Chelsi Zash, “Domino’s Goes Out of Business After YouTube Video,” WFMY News, http://www.digtriad.com/news/local_state/article.aspx?storyid=131072, September 30, 2009, accessed October 2009.