PSA Humane Society Video

The first version of this PSA was done in the internet-based video editing service.

The social issue I chose to address in my PSA was people who are either reluctant to adopt their pets from an animal shelter, or those who are simply unaware that doing so is an option.  In the video, I inserted a number of photographs depicting cute dogs and cats in order to show the video viewers that cats and dogs make good companions regardless of if the came from a breeder or a shelter. 

 

 

For the PSA (the iMovie version), I used a number of different photos of cats and dogs.  Many of the photos I took myself, the Dorchester County Humane Society in Cambridge, Maryland gave the rest of the pictures to me.  I inserted five text slides, most of them addressing a different misconception held by people who are hesitant to adopt an animal.  After all of the slides that I intended to use were in my iMovie project, I adjusted the length of each slide so that they not only fit into the one-minute timeframe, but also so that their transitions fit into the rhythm of the music.  Once I was happy with the way my PSA was looking, I converted it into QuickTime format and uploaded it to my YouTube account.  From there I copied and pasted the embedded link directly into my blog post so that I could be streamed directly from my Blogger page.

Dominos YouTube PR Disaster

A few days ago, two teenagers who were workingat a Dominos pizza chain decided that they would make a video and upload it to YouTube.  The motivation behind this appears to be simply boredom.  So what's the big deal?  Teenagers post up videos on YouTube all the time, after all.  Well the difference in this case is that the video depicted the two teens dressed in full Dominos uniform, doing stomach-wrenching acts to food that was seemingly going to be sold to customers.  Sticking cheese up their noses and then placing in on a sandwich was just one example of the two teen's antics.  Dominos managed to act relatively quickly and pulled the video down in less than two days.  But by then the damage had been done.  The video had received close to one million hits by then, so it's safe to say that the damage had been done.  On top of this, it would seem that some viewers of the original video downloaded it off of YouTube and have since posted it back up.  In other words, the pizza clip is now impossible to squash.  But what does this mean for Dominos, or any company for that matter?  I mean, its not like the company did anything wrong themselves.  This could have happened to any company and this type of behavior is not unheard of in the kitchens of restaurants.  The difference now is that todays disgruntled employees now have the power to share their disgusting acts with the whole world instantly, and thus doing significant damage to the company and it's reputation.  This is a tough situation to deal with for any organization.  My advice to Dominos and pretty much any other organization is to keep a close and constant eye on what is being carried out in you name on the web.  The only other thing they could do is press charges against the offenders so as to make and example of them (Dominos is looking at this option) .  This will at least act as something of a deterrent.  Other than that, there's not much else to do.  There will always be unhappy employees and many of them will have video cameras.  Just hope their not targeting you with them.