Update to Dominick’s Facebook Drama
A few weeks ago I ran a post about Dominick’s Facebook page and the drama that quickly arose. I’ve been following this page since the story of expired food items broke on major Chicago news stations, and I have to say it’s been an interesting run.
The day after the story broke, the President of Dominick’s put himself out there on the company’s Facebook page:
They also reset the wall’s filters so that only comments made by Dominick’s were visible for users visiting the page. It took people a while to realize this, but for the short-term, all of the negativity that transpired the weeks leading up to this were hidden from view.
The comments that ensued were voluminous, and Dominck’s responded as needed, while still continuing to add other information to their wall. Interestingly enough, after about a week or so, I started seeing more positivity coming from users, as well as users being quick to shut down negativity. We’ll never know if these users were planted to help Dominick’s regain their standing on Facebook, or if they were true customers who, being alerted to the Facebook drama by the news/media outlets, joined the page to offer their support to the company.
At any rate, it seems as though the drama has passed, and hopefully Dominick’s took some good lessons from the experience. I knew it was really over when I saw this post, in which someone (for the millionth time) made a crack about expired products and was quickly shut down:
So, as it seems, all’s well that ends well. This is a good lesson for businesses – whether your takeaway is the effect silence can have when it comes to negative feedback, or how “badvocates” can affect your company’s social media efforts (we’ll talk about that in upcoming posts), it is something that every company can learn from.
Kathy:
This story was bought to my attention by a client. Thank you for the update. For me, this whole situation validated the need for Dominick’s to have established governance because I believe this all started about a bad coupon post, so employees better understand the rules of engagement. Next, all companies need to discuss a contingency plan if things go south. What I find interesting is I read recently that Starbucks has a wall of tweets in corporate that Howard looks at good or bad. Where is this all going to go? Should we accept criticism, respond and move on. What about authenticity? Are all the positive posts authentic. Sometimes I am beginning to wonder if social media facilitates roach bait marketing.