Domino’s Mea Culpa
January 29th, 2010 - 31 Comments
In Domino’s Pizza’s new ad campaign, the company is doing something rather unusual in the world of marketing: admitting that its core product stinks. Video ads feature company managers reading customer comments about their pizzas, with glowing reviews like, “Worst excuse for pizza I’ve ever had,” “The sauce tastes like ketchup,” and “Totally void of flavor.”
The marketing message is this: Domino’s Pizza hears you, and we’ve completely revamped our pizza. The company has changed nearly all of the key pizza components—crust, sauce, and cheese—to produce a new and improved Domino’s Pizza.
For Smeal’s Jennifer Chang Coupland, the campaign initially reminded her of the colossal failure of New Coke in the 1980s, but, she says, changes in attitudes, culture, and technology might be working in Domino’s favor:
This entry was posted on Friday, January 29th, 2010 at 1:21 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.When I first saw the Domino’s ads, I thought to myself, “Oh no! It’s New Coke all over again.” What we learned in the Coke case is that competing brands don’t necessarily have to compete on the same attributes. In the early 1980s, when Pepsi started the Pepsi Challenge, it was all about taste—and Coke was worried, so they gave in and changed the recipe, along with their marketing messages, packaging, and the entire brand. What they later realized, however, is that people associated Coke not with taste, but with Americana, tradition, and nostalgia—and all of that was lost with New Coke. Coke and Pepsi both had their differentiators—Pepsi on taste and Coke on tradition.
We don’t see this in the Pizza industry. There are no strong differentiators between Domino’s and Pizza Hut, for example. So, what Domino’s is trying to do here is stand out from the crowd based on something as basic and functional as taste.
Another difference compared to the Coke case is the cultural shift since the 1980s. The ’80s were materialistic and arguably more superficial, and now our culture is more about being true to oneself and others—and that’s exactly what Domino’s is doing when it admits its past mistakes. This honest message goes over well nowadays. And so does the self-deprecating humor and the documentary/reality-TV style presented in its commercials and viral ads.
The third factor in favor of Domino’s is technology. The company’s humorous ads are showing up on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. People are sharing them and talking about Domino’s Pizza more and more. Pop culture commentators—like Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert—are talking about Domino’s and clips from these programs are furthering the impact of the ad campaign.
While it’s risky for any company to come out and say that they have failed—and to post a live Twitter feed on their Web site with both positive and negative comments about their product—there are marketing, cultural, and technological principles in play in this case that just might make this move successful.
31 Responses to “Domino’s Mea Culpa”
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[...] To read the rest of the article and her opinion, go here: Domino’s Mea Culpa. [...]
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