Your employees are a big part of your brand

Brands today are many things but in a world of instant communication via social media and smart phones what your employees do and say can be a very big part of your brand.  The latest example is a Papa John’s employee who made a racial slur to identify a customer at one of their New York City stores.  The result was a social media avalanche of “OMG”.

An Asian woman goes into a Papa John’s in New York and the cashier, on her receipt, identifies her as “lady chink eyes”.  When the customer see’s the receipt she takes a picture of it and it spreads throughout the Twitter world like an out of control wildfire.   Major “oopsie”.

Hopefully most consumers will be smart enough to realize that it’s not Papa John’s who’s responsible for inappropriate behavior in this case, it’s a employee who probably defines the word dumb. Unfortunately, Twitter is  already seeing tweets in the Twitter stream pointing fingers at the brand and in a way that’s too bad but there was a breakdown somewhere in the system that allowed this person to become a Papa John’s employee.

Trolls are always going to hate and consumers love to pile on any big company for even minor mistakes today to vent their outrage.  Will Papa John’s loose any business because of this misstep ?  I doubt it, it seems to be more of a “I can’t believe this happened” than anything else but it also shows once again that everything you do and everyone of your people is your brand.

Maybe if Papa John’s had a better employment screening process or paid higher wages they wouldn’t have settle for someone with the intelligence of wet cement to wait on customers.  I’m sure this employee will be terminated and of course there will be more chatter via social media but marketers have to remember that most consumers are not in a forgiving mood today even if you admit your mistakes and move on.

In a month of so this will all be forgotten and Papa John’s will still serve their generic pizza to millions (sorry but New York pizza is still the best).  Make sure that the people who represent your brand are well trained but more importantly pay better wages and you’ll get a better quality of employee.