Fighting public opinion can be tough, as McDonalds found out a few years back. Environmentalist groups had been pressuring McDonalds to change from using Styrofoam packaging to paper. They alleged that Styrofoam was contributing to landfill problems because of Styrofoam’s long life.

The President of McDonalds at the time, Ed Rensi, disagreed and hired archaeologists from the University of Arizona to conduct extensive research into the landfills. They concluded Styrofoam had little, or nothing, to do with the impact or contribution of the landfill problem, especially McDonalds packaging.

McDonalds tried to share their findings with the news media, but found it difficult for them to pick it up. It just seemed that it didn’t fit the narrative of what the news media thought was environmentally correct.

After months of trying to change public opinion and the news media, President Ed Rensi angrily realized he just was not going to change public opinion. He ultimately switched McDonalds from Styrofoam packaging to paper packaging.

In April 2009, two Domino Pizza employees videotaped themselves doing some stomach-churning things to food they were preparing, and then compounded their stupidity by posting it on YouTube.

Despite Domino’s identified the store within 24 hours, sterilized everything, and fired the employees, that didn’t stop the video from getting immense exposure on YouTube, Twitter, and ultimately the broadcast and print news media.

Domino’s had to fight fire with fire and used social media to help them do this. First, they had sites remove the offensive video. Secondly, they produced a video of President Patrick Doyle reassuring customers that Dominos was taking the matter seriously. And third, they rolled out their own Twitter account.

By the end of the week, Domino’s had effectively changed the conversation from the disgusting acts of these two individuals, to how well Domino’s had responded to it.

The demonstrates one of the ways social media can be effective in managing one’s brand and reputation online.

While the current recession has hit advertising agencies and mass media outlets hard, the forecast is for mass advertising, such as TV, radio, magazines, and newspapers, to continue to lose its share of overall advertising budgets.

TV is losing viewers, radio is losing listeners, and magazines and newspapers are losing readers. What’s driving this trend is that consumers are trending more towards digital media driven by online content – typified by YouTube, Facebook, online gaming, as well as more and more homes having access to broadband internet connectivity  and its capability to provide an ever-growing and an ever-higher quality of video content.

Another factor that is driving this change is that online advertising tends to be more efficient and more measurable. It’s predicted by Pricewaterhouse Coopers that by 2013, online advertising will grow to 20% of total advertising revenue, up from its current 13%.