According to sources, after being sacked as CEO and chairman of Papa John’s, John Schnatter (who remains the company’s largest shareholder) is not giving up on his mission to “rescue” the company. The problem is that he is the reason why the company has been put through the wringer over the Papa John Specials over the previous few months.
Throughout the previous year, two events in particular generated negative sentiment about Papa John Specials. First and foremost, Papa John Schnatter blamed decreased pizza sales on NFL anthem protests, a move that received enormous criticism and is largely considered to be the reason for his departure as CEO. Second, he used a racist term during a conference call, for which he expressed regret and subsequently resigned as chairman of the company.
Prominently Schnatter’s Face And Name Appear
Now that Papa John Schnatter has stepped down (though he remains the company’s largest stakeholder, as previously mentioned), Papa John Specials is seeking to recover its tainted reputation. Given how prominently Schnatter’s face and name feature in the company’s logo and marketing materials, it won’t be easy. You could even claim that he is the brand, as seen by his website, which begins with the words “I am Papa John.” He is the company’s public face.
The removal of the apostrophe from the name “Papa John Schnatter” is reported to be a manoeuvre by the firm, resulting in the name becoming “Papa John Specials.” The team received an email over the weekend notifying them that a Brand watch Signal had been put throughout the company’s offices.
It’s questionable whether or not removing the apostrophe will go far enough to separate the brand from its founder, but that’s not what we’re here to discuss today.
The idea is to do a social data biopsy on what has occurred thus far in order to determine what we can learn from the responses to the two articles mentioned above.
We’ll discuss how many people were talking about the stories, how tweeters and news sites handled them, and how the stories have influenced Papa John Schnatter’s visual mentions on social media in this panel.
Generate The Most Discussion
It goes without saying that neither episode is good for Papa John Specials, especially when you consider that they’ve accounted for more than a third of the brand’s online conversation in the past year.
Which of the two, on the other hand, aroused more discussion? We analysed public debates on the web over the previous year to decide which article sparked the greatest online debate and awarded the winner a Papajohns Promo Codes.
The NFL news, it turns out, drew considerably more individual attention than Papa John Schnatter’s awful conference call behaviour.
Perhaps this is due to the disparities between the two incidents – the words about NFL protests were questionable, whereas the use of the N-word appeared to be a more black-and-white case.
Observations And News
We were curious to see how the average tweeter handled the Papa John Specials scandal in comparison to the mainstream media, and we found that there was a significant difference in how the two topics were handled in relation to one another.
The scale of each response was compared by taking the total number of Twitter mentions and the total number of news pieces we monitored about those two incidents within two days of them breaking. Please bear in mind that we are comparing the volume of tweets within each media, not the number of tweets.
For example, the number of news reports about the first incident is compared to the number of stories about the second event.
As you can see, the second incidence received substantially more attention from news media, whilst the first received far more attention from tweeters.
Perhaps the nature of the incidents has also played an impact. It is on Twitter that the debate takes place. A CEO making racially derogatory statements is a significant news that does not require much discussion about whether or not it was appropriate.
The Visual Communication Between Papa John And His Audience
A large part of internet conversation regarding a brand may not even “mention” the brand. Instead, a brand will be shown within an image, and we’ve noticed that substantial chunks of brand-related conversation (up to 90%) may not mention the brand at all in the accompanying language.
With this in mind, we looked at Papa John Specials’ visual mentions on Twitter and Instagram to see if any of the stories we’re concerned about would organically surface on the sites in question.
The answer is yes: we found allusions to the racist slur Papa John Schnatter used on the first page of browsing through both Twitter and Instagram discussions. These allusions included other content in addition to graphics of Papa John’s various sponsored sporting events and pizza boxes.
The image of Papa John Schnatter was prominently featured in the images that attracted the most attention, demonstrating the brand’s ubiquity.
What Does The Future Hold For Papa John’s?
Detaching itself from a founder with a tarnished reputation would be a nightmare for Papa John Specials, which would have to rethink its entire brand identity. His image is all over the place, his name is all over the place, and his actions are dominating the brand’s conversation.
This means that if the corporation wants to continue without Papa John Schnatter, it’ll have to silence him and make changes that go beyond replacing the apostrophe.
