Would You Like Boogers With Your Dominos Sub?

UPDATE (5:50PM): The girl in the video has apparently ordered the videos removed from YouTube. However, they are still available through the goodasyou.org.

This morning while surfing Adage.com, I found a news article surrounding this video. As if that Dominos dessert pizza wasn't gross enough, Two Dominos employees thought it would be hilarious to record themselves doing gross things to food while on duty.

There are a few things I wanted to touch down on that pertain to this video and the series of other Dominos gross-out videos these two recorded.

First off: "Ewww!"

Second of all, we would like to think that people by now understand what not to do with the Internet, especially when it comes to your job. However, these things unfortunately will happen. And it will probably happen again. Hopefully not to Dominos. In the age of social media, the expression, "With great power comes great responsibility," couldn't be more true. As a society, I think we're still wrestling with what we can and can't post on the Internet. While these acts of grossness seem to be obvious things not to do, it happened.

In a response to Dominos, Kristy (the girl in the video) had this to say:

"It was all a prank and me nor Michael expected to have this much attention from the videos that were uploaded! No food was ever sent out to any customer. We would never put something like that on you tube if it were real!! It was fake and I wish that everyone knew that!!!!"

- From Ad Age

Regardless of the thought behind these videos, they're clearly a lapse in good judgement.

On Dominos side, what do you do?

Here's another quote from the Ad Age article:

He (Dominos spokesman Tim McIntyre) said the company decided not to issue a press release or post a statement online. After all, he said, the company can deal with tens of thousands of impressions, but a strong response from Domino's would alert more consumers to the embarrassment.

The problem is, more consumers are finding it on their own. The original videos have been deleted, but others have since reposted them all. The video I posted at the top has been seen over 700,000 times in 2 days. Even if those users delete it, who knows who else has a copy of it to repost? Back to the idea of the online footprint; odds are, those videos are a part of Internet history forever. At what point do you step out and act on it? Or do you at all?

Anthony Kalamut discussed a somewhat similar situation involving kids smoking Rockets (or Smarties, as they call them in America). At the end of his piece were a few rules of thumb with dealing with those who mess with your brand.

It's a messy situation all-around and I hope Dominos can recover from this. We'll see how they handle this situation going forward.