After being fired as CEO and chairman of Papa John Schnatter (who continues to be the firm’s biggest shareholder) is not giving up on his quest to “rescue” the company, according to reports. The difficulty with that is that he is the reason why the firm has been put through the proverbial ringer over the Papa John Specials the last couple of months.
Two occurrences, in particular, occurred throughout the last year that fueled negative sentiment against Papa John Specials. First and foremost, Papa John Schnatter blamed declining pizza sales on NFL anthem protests, a move that drew widespread condemnation and is widely believed to be the basis for his resignation as CEO. Second, he made use of a racist slur on a conference call, for which he expressed regret and subsequently resigned from his position as chairman of the firm.
Prominently Schnatter’s Face And Name Appear
Papa John Specials is attempting to repair its tarnished reputation now that Papa John Schnatter has stepped back (although he remains the company’s biggest shareholder, as previously stated). It’s not going to be a simple task, given how prominently Schnatter’s face and name appear in the company’s logo and marketing materials. You might even argue he is the brand, which he emphasizes on his website, which begins with the statement “I am Papa John.” He is the face of the company.
A speculated move by the corporation will be the elimination of the apostrophe from the name “Papa John Schnatter,” which will result in the name becoming “Papa John Specials.” Over the weekend, the crew received an email informing them of a Brand watch Signal that had been placed around the company’s offices.
It’s debatable whether or not eliminating the apostrophe will go far enough to disassociate the brand from the guy who founded it, but that’s not what we’re here to talk about today.
The goal is to do a type of social data biopsy on what has transpired so far to discover what we can learn from the responses to the two articles we discussed above.
In this panel, we’ll talk about how many people were talking about the stories, the varied ways that tweeters and news sites dealt with them, and how the stories have affected Papa John Schnatter’s visual mentions on social media.
Generate The Most Discussion
It goes without saying that neither of the episodes is good for Papa John Specials– particularly when you consider that between them, they’ve accounted for over a third of the brand’s online discourse over the previous year.
Which, on the other hand, sparked more debate? We looked at public dialogues throughout the web over the previous year to determine which article generated the most online discussion and give the winner Papa John Promo Code.
It turns out that the NFL news generated far more individual mentions than Papa John Schnatter’s egregious conference call behavior.
Perhaps this is owing to the differences like the two occurrences — the remarks about NFL protests were debatable, but the use of the N-word seemed to be a more cut-and-dry situation.
Observations And News
We were curious to see how the typical tweeter was discussing all of Papa John Specials controversy in comparison to the mainstream media, and we discovered that there was a substantial difference in how the two topics we described above were handled compared to one another.
This research was done by taking the entire number of Twitter mentions and the total number of news stories we monitored about those two incidences within two days of them breaking and comparing the magnitude of each response. Please keep in mind that we are not comparing the number of tweets with news pieces; rather, we are comparing the volume of tweets within each media.
Example: The number of news articles covering the first event is compared to the number of news stories covering the second occurrence.
As you can see, news sources tended to provide far more coverage to the second occurrence, whilst tweeters appeared to devote significantly more attention to the first.
Perhaps the nature of the incidences has had a role in this as well. Twitter is the place where the argument takes place. A CEO making racially disparaging remarks is an important story that doesn’t need much debate on whether or not it was acceptable to do so.
The Visual Communication Between Papa John And His Audience
A significant portion of online discourse about a brand may not even “mention” the brand at all. A brand will instead be presented inside an image – and we’ve discovered that large sections (up to about 90%) of brand-related discourse may not mention the brand at all in the accompanying text.
Keeping this in mind, we decided to go at Papa John Specials’ visual mentions on Twitter and Instagram to see whether any of the tales we’re worried about here would naturally appear on the social media platforms in question.
The answer is true – on the first page of browsing through both Twitter and Instagram chats, we discovered allusions to the racist slur Papa John Schnatter used. In addition to visuals of Papa John’s different sponsored sports events and pizza boxes, these references featured other content.
Papa John Schnatter’s visage was prominently featured in the photographs that received the most attention – another indication of how omnipresent the brand has become.
What Does The Future Hold For Papa John’s?
Detaching itself from a founder whose reputation is in the toilet would be a nightmare for Papa John Specials, who will have to reinvent its whole brand identity. His likeness is all over the place, his name is all over the place, and his activities are dominating the debate around the brand.
This means that if the company wants to go on without Papa John Schnatter, it will need to silence him and undertake adjustments that go beyond simply changing the apostrophe.
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