I thought it interesting to write a little piece on Domino's Pizza and their somewhat recent (early 2010) transparent marketing campaign. Domino's realized in early 2010 that their pizza tastes like garbage, had for a while and they were seemingly the last to know.
Domino's posted a loss of $67 million in 1991. By 1996, through sweeping changes, Domino's was back on track with earnings over $50 million on revenues of $2.8 billion. For the next decade or so Domino's slowly lost market share to Pizza Hut and Papa John's.
So in early 2010 Domino's took on a transparent marketing strategy to tell everyone how bad their pizza is and how they're working to make it better.
This is a good example of shifting your marketing away from purely an advertising strategy to more of a marketing and public relations strategy.
This is an interesting strategy. When you look at the delivery pizza industry, Domino's is an example of a company that was slow to change and did not keep tabs on the competition. If you go back 10 years or so, the pizza market was pretty clearly defined, Pizza Hut was considered the quality taste pizza, while Dominos was considered the "delivery" pizza. Everyone knew that Domino's was not that good, but that was not why the purchase was made. Domino's was in business because of convenience. People did not have to leave home to get a pizza. Well, with new competition that focused on both delivery and quality Domino's was not in a good position. It will be interesting to see where this goes.
ReplyDeleteI like these advertisements, especially because they focus on their flaws and how they can make the business and their products better. Few companies have the gall to do this and get away with it, however I feel that this will be a really successful campaign in the eyes of the customer.
ReplyDeleteWhile I would never chose Domino's over a local pizza shop, as I see no reason to, I still respect the brand more than ever before.
Chris