Does he look like a crybaby?

Background:
The story goes that last Friday night (5/2/2008) a local Papa John’s franchise in the District of Columbia issued free t-shirts at Verizon Center where the Washington Wizards played the Cleveland Cavaliers in the final game of the play off series. The all-white t-shirts featured the number “23” under the word “crybaby” and the Papa John’s logo.

This is in reference to Cavaliers star player LeBron James, number 23, making a fuss over a few hard fowls that he received in the previous game of the playoff series. There were plenty of shirts to go-around. The shirts failed to distract the six-foot, eight-inch shooting guard when he scored a game leading 27 points. Cavalier fans back in Cleveland, Ohio moved for a boycott against the pizza company to show support for their basketball team that beat out the Wizards 4-2 in the series.

Results:
Papa John’s corporate is dealing with a major “butt-kissing” scenario in Cleveland. The company issued a formal apology, announced that it will donate $10,000 to the Cavaliers’ Youth Fund, and that it will offer $.23 large one-topping pizzas to residents of Cleveland today to make-up for what one franchise did.

The Wizards issued a comment saying that they had no involvement with the stunt that attempted to gain favor with the Washington fans. They noted on the level of sportsmanship that a team must maintain.

In Cleveland, some fans are set in boycotting the national pizza chain while others line up in front of the more than 40 pizza shops that Papa Johns has in Cleveland. Because the pizza chain can not feasibly deliver all the pizzas that would be ordered for 23 cents, lines of more than 200 people wait for their pizza while showing support for LeBron and the Cavaliers.

You can buy your very own Papa John’s “crybaby” t-shirt on ebay for as low as $12.95.

My Thoughts:
This is a case where the company at large must pay for what one franchise owner did. I bet that everyone working at a Papa Johns in Cleveland is not to happy with him or her. This is a classic example of a reactive response. What should happen in the future to avoid these types of situations is make sure that all deliverables receive an O.K. from headquarters before the promotional material is handed out. If it has the company name on it, the company as a whole should approve. This would be a great way to use a proactive model.

It is good, however, that Papa John's is taking full responsibility for their actions though. It's obvious that Papa John's doesn't want to ruin their image because they are giving back so much. When flukes such as this occur, it is best to bite the bullet and move on by impementing new policy to insure that nothing like it happens again. This is combining reactive with proactive responses.

Because Papa John's is doing so much to recover from the incident, they are gaining a lot of good press coverage as well. Although media attention is media attention whether bad or good, it is always best to take something bad and turn it into something that is good and I think that is exactly what Papa John's did here. So, good job on recovery. they received a lot of coverage on this.

You can check out more discussion on the matter here. So Good is a blog dedicated to food.

Also you can check out the full story here on Fox News.