In mid April, two Domino's Pizza workers in North Carolina uploaded a YouTube video of their less-than-sanitary kitchen antics. While the employees were both fired and the franchise was closed for sanitation, the brand's social stock still took a nose dive in both traditional and social media circles. With Social Radar, you can clearly see the tag cloud of frequently used words alongside the brand, the percentage of negative and positive comments and the exact moment on April 15th when the tide began to turn. Similar to ContextVoice's API tools, Social Radar can be used to measure the success of product launches, political campaigns and even inform trading decisions.

As an additional service to customers, Infegy rates a number of Fortune 500 companies and top brands across the web. Social Radar allows Infegy to track unique brand references, common words and sentiments. A list of the most-mentioned 50 social brands on the web is available on Infegy's Buzz Study blog. The list includes Twitter, Apple, Facebook, YouTube, Obama, MySpace, Microsoft, Yahoo, Disney and Fox.

For more on Social Radar, visit infegy.com/socialradar.

Fighting Back on YouTube and Twitter

In response to this uproar, Domino's decided to release its own video on YouTube, which features Domino's president Patrick Doyle. Of course, Doyle's video, which refers to the story as a 'hoax,' will not be able to draw half a million viewers, but Domino's Pizza is doing the right thing by going to YouTube, where, after all, the whole affair began.

The video, however, is not as effective as it could have been, as Doyle is clearly reading from a script and barely looks into the camera.

Domino's is also actively using the company's official Twitter account to reach out to customers who are talking about the company.

Solution: Ban Video Cameras in Stores?

Bruce Horovitz, in USA Today, describes some of the lessons that other companies can learn from from this controversy. Among other things, he recommends that companies actively monitor Twitter and other social media channels, so that companies can respond quickly when problems appear. Comcast is a good example of a company that is using Twitter to rebuild its image.

According to Horovitz, Domino's is now also considering banning video cameras from its stores, which will probably do nothing to alleviate consumers' concerns.

In the end, the only thing a company can do is to quickly react to these events. Doyle's video, however, looks too scripted, and instead of banning cameras, Domino's should welcome cameras in its stores, so that customers can see that this was an isolated incident that is not representative of behavior of the thousands of other employees Domino's and its franchisees have.

Update: we just got some interesting data from communications research company MediaCurves, which did a quick survey of consumer reactions before and after watching Domino's apology.

Here are the results:

"Which of the following actions are you likely to perform in the next three months?"

	Before Viewing Prank Video		After Viewing Prank Video		After Viewing Apology Video
	Total (n=243)		Total (n=243)		Total (n=243)
Go to a Domino's	29%		10%		20%
Order Domino's for delivery	46%		15%		24%
Visit Dominos' web site	25%		14%		24%
Search for information on Domino's	14%		10%		20%
Watch an advertisement/ commercial on Domino's	61%		27%		42%

"Do you think the apology response video released by Domino's USA President, Patrick Doyle, was effective in rectifying and restoring Domino's image after this incident?"

	Total (n=243)
Yes	31%
Somewhat	60%
No	9%