via the Independent

Google, famous for flying the corporate "do no evil" flag, is accused of -- and this is putting it mildly -- a lackluster commitment to practicing what they preach. Threat Level asserts that their regular claims to championing freedom of information (as evinced on Google's public policy blog among other places) are inconsistent with the "real facts".

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A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about the recent PR disaster at Domino's Pizza. To recap, Domino's suffered a major impact to brand perception as a viral video made by two less-than-savory employees in a Domino's kitchen rapidly and probably lastingly besmirched Domino's online presence.

I also noted that since this, media bloggers are in overdrive, trying to prepare damage control strategies to offer their clientèle in what everyone now understands are inevitable future instances of similar PR pandemics.

It strikes me, though, that in this instance an ounce of prevention would be worth a pound of cure. Or a ton.

While no one ought to attempt to justify the behavior of the two employees, it's worth considering that the whole incident might have been prevented if they had a different relationship to their employer. Many companies feel comfortable relying on the bad economy (or other mitigating factors) to motivate employees to perform well at their jobs. This means that these companies can jettison part of their own responsibility to help ensure satisfaction among their employees. Since they can, of course, they often do.

We all know, also, that there has been a particularly strong correlation established between happiness and productivity. We also know fewer Americans than ever are happy in their jobs. As any behavioral psychologist will tell you, when people are unhappy, they act out. Sometimes this means merely wasting company resources playing Solitaire all day, and sometimes it means making a video of yourself and your co-worker violating every health code known to man in your employer's kitchen, and then posting it on the Internet.

I don't have any strong evidence to demonstrate the relevance of these observations to this particular instance, but as a small business owner myself, I'm pretty sure they're worth considering.

You've no doubt heard about this by now, as it's been one of the most popular stories in the media for the past week.

If you haven't, here are the bullet points, excerpted from the New York Times article.

Two Domino's employees made a video in the restaurant's kitchen. In the video, one provides narration while the other performs gross violations of health-code standards. Within days:

1. The video had been viewed more than a million times on YouTube.
2. References to it were in five of the 12 results on the first page of Google search for "Domino's."
3. Discussions about it had contaminated Twitter.
4. The perception of Domino's quality among consumers went from positive to negative, according to online surveys at YouGov.

Photographs of ex-Domino's employees Kristy Hammonds and Michael Setzer from the Conover, N.C., Police Department

In just a few days, Domino's reputation was damaged. "We got blindsided by two idiots with a video camera and an awful idea," said Domino's spokesman Tim McIntyre. "Even people who've been with us as loyal customers for 10, 15, 20 years, people are second-guessing their relationship with Domino's, and that's not fair."

This is an interesting practical situation. Unlike in the case of Virgin Airlines, this incident does not seem to be as clearly attributable to the brand itself. Indeed, the analysis of the Domino's incident (and the recent similar one at Amazon, although that one may be slightly less apropos to my point here) has almost exclusively addressed damage control strategies for incidents of this type, treating them as rather more like a hurricane than as a symptom of endemic organizational problems.

I wonder, though, if there isn't something even more interesting to be found by treating them as the latter. If we can justly do this, and we do, then perhaps we can comport ourselves to the disease, rather than the symptom. I'm thinking about this now, and I'll try to write about it next week.

What do you do when you receive poor service or shoddy products? Write a letter or perhaps call the company? Leave feedback on a website? To escalate things further, you might tweet, post on Facebook, or even write a blog post about the experience. But if you really want action on your complaint, I suggest taking a picture.

We’ve written several times about the power of technology to create transparency and expose poor business practices. I can’t believe that up to this point we haven’t mentioned one of the oldest forms of this practice: photography.

Now that nearly everyone has a digital camera on them at all times (thanks to cell phones), publishing a picture in the moment is as trivial as sending an email. Citizens are wielding this power to hold governments and police accountable for their actions. We should expect them to do the same for companies.

Most people prefer their food without a layer of oil on top.

The UK was abuzz yesterday over “the world's best passenger complaint letter”. In this letter, a former Virgin passenger writes at length about the horrible food and entertainment he experienced on a recent flight. While I found the prose entertaining, I was more swayed by the pictures he took with his cell phone.

Apparently, the one one the left (with the tomato) is the dessert.

From the letter alone, one might come to the conclusion that the author was merely exaggerating for effect. But to actually see the food in question is another matter. Pictures provide evidence to one's claims. Moreover, pictures require minimal investment. Reading takes time and attention. It takes a person practically no time to scan a picture and form an opinion.

Look at that picture and come to your own conclusion. Would you want to eat that stuff? How can an airline (especially Virgin) possibly find that acceptable?

If you run or work at a company, the next time you see something that looks wrong or is of substandard quality, ask yourself: “What would somebody think about my business if they saw a picture of that?”

Because, these days, they just might.

Adam Greenfield, ubiquitous computing pundit, wrote a blog post recently about an unusual British Airways advertisement he encountered:

This is how the ad reads: “YESTERDAY AT T5 AVERAGE TIME THROUGH SECURITY WAS 4.7 MINS. This picture was taken at 9:44am yesterday and shows Amanda Gemmill on her way to Beijing to watch her boyfriend compete in the Men’s Eight Rowing Final. 4.7 minutes was the average time the 842 customers we asked told us it took them to pass through Security yesterday, between 6am and 2pm. We had to stop at 2pm so we could make this ad.”

The purpose of this ad is to reassure travelers that Heathrow's new Terminal 5 alleviates the airport's infamously long security waits which often lead to delayed departures.

As Greenfield points out, the ad was created in what is soon to be "the old-fashioned way": humans walking around talking to humans, rushing information to the printers, and fixing it to static sheets of pulp. In the near future, it will be possible do the same thing in realtime, with sensors and dynamic media.

Consider the implications of this "transparent advertising". If BA is uses realtime data to taut better service, then to make their point they actually have to have better service.

Let that sink in for a moment.

If the data is not being manipulated and the ads aren't taken down at the first sign of trouble, this is a ballsy move. If BA holds up their end of the deal, it makes a powerful statement: "We don't need to be clever, we're just good-- and we've got the data to prove it". However, if BA slips up, that same copy becomes a public dissemination of guilt. Transparency cuts both ways.

It's an interesting angle in this age of jaded consumers: deliver on what is promised; truth, if not accountability, in advertising. I realize it's naive to expect things to work this way, but shouldn't they?

(Zingerman's would do it)

I was doing some work this afternoon and procrastinated with some Facebook maintenance which involved reloading the site several times over the span of a few minutes in order to view my profile changes.

Imagine my utter shock when this ad was served up and would not leave my newsfeed:

Of course, when I saw this, I immediately made a blog post. Apparently, I am easily distracted.

Facebook, like AdSense and many other websites, uses contextual elements (favorite TV shows in your profile, for example) to serve up targeted advertising.

The ad in question is most likely just an unfortunate coincidence, but for a moment I thought I had been observed, morally judged for my behavior, and then given a sales pitch.

(In other words, I probably had a glimpse of the future.)