Domino’s Runs Social Media Experiment
In case you haven’t heard, Domino’s Pizza is running a social media experiment that would make most PR managers cringe. They have rented a 4,630 square-foot billboard in Time Square in New York City to post unedited comments about their pizza. The billboard is a live stream of comments from people as they post them on Domino’s website and can be either good or bad. Domino’s CEO Patrick Doyle states that, “Our customers deserve, and have come to expect, honesty from us. And when it comes to the idea of posting direct feedback in Time Square, it really doesn’t get more honest and open than this.” Doyle sure isn’t lying there. I have heard the saying that no publicity is bad publicity, but this takes that a little extreme. There will be a person monitoring the comments and removing ones that either contain offensive/obscene content, is irrelevant to Domino’s Pizza, or is viewed as self-promotional content. Because of this, whose to say that this same person won’t be removing poor comments in an attempt to make the franchise look better? We will never really know this, but it is as close to full disclosure as Domino’s can get. I think it will be interesting to see how long Domino’s leaves this billboard up and if they last until their goal date of August 23, 2011. As for me, I will sit back and watch as one of America’s leading companies in online sales and advertisements continues to change the industry of how we market to the public.
Do you think that this is a good idea? Why or why not?
