Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Dominick's is (or was) a chain of food stores in the Chicago area that dates back to 1918.  The outfit has gone through several changes of ownership and in 1998 it was bought by Safeway.  Apparently things haven't been going that well because Safeway announced a couple months ago that they would be closing 72 Dominick's stores and laying off more than 6000 people on December 28th.

One of the employees about to get canned -- a young fellow named Steve Yamato --  made a humorous SciFi video which showed dragons, monsters, asteroids etc squashing Dominick's employees and he titled the mini flick: "Thanks Safeway."  Then he posted it on YouTube.

When Yamamoto arrived for his last day of work -- he was told that he was suspended.  Huh?  He (and 6600 other people) were going to be cashiered anyway - but Safeway decided to mop the floor with him as an example for remaining employees perhaps...

If your product sucks, PR can't help you. Neither can marketing, advertising or any other form of communications you can think of. If your product sucks, breaks, never worked in the first place, then you're screwed.

...f your product sucks, you can write all the key messages you want. You can work harder than you ever have before to control the message. But at the end of the day, the message your customers will say loud and clear will be that your product sucks. And let me be clear that they’d be saying it sucks whether or not social media existed. Online or offline....