Domino’s pizza launched in the 1960 in the United States, is one of the biggest leaders in pizza delivery on a global level, the success of the company can be gauged from the fact that more than 500 million pizzas are sold every year, with more than 5,000 stores outside the United States, satiating the taste buds with Domino’s hot and delicious products on a daily basis. Being the pioneer of the pizza delivery system, the company is rapidly growing, and is already serving 80 international markets (International).
One of the primary reasons for dominos success besides, its global distribution, is the astute and innovative use of the marketing strategies, that positioned Domino’s, as the pizza brand of choice in the minds of the consumers amid stiff competition and the unique flavors.
Domino’s recognized that pizza is a major part of the popular culture of the consumers globally, and with the company lagging behind the pack as a preferred pizza retailer in 2009, the strategic shift, started with a focused plan for product development, rebranding, and most importantly creating a winning mobile customer experience (Connors).
The brick to the success that Domino’s enjoys today, was laid by the legendary Crispin Porter & Bogusky “Pizza Turnaround” marketing and PR campaign, that showcased the issues that Domino’s was going through in a very public spectacle, that transformed the ‘devoid of taste and ‘cardboard’ like tasting pizza, as mentioned by customers in the video, to the preferred choice of the consumers (Connors).
The marketing campaign that was aptly named ‘Oh Yes We Did, and was produced as a series of ads, is a testament to the success of Domino’s marketing influence, from a strategic viewpoint, the company did not want to the marketing to be showcased as a clichéd promotion in terms of new and improved products, rather, the ads, showed new recipes and encouraged customers to alert when the ordered pizzas was substandard (Klaassen).
The marketing campaigns initiated by Domino’s are strongly linked to the digital channels, the primary reason being that, 45% most of the sales are coming through digitally, that is up from 35% in 2013, which is a big jump (Connors).
The idea behind Domino’s marketing campaign is to create a brand endorsement for the pizza through customers, one such campaign tweet-to-eat, that was launched last year, illustrates the strategy effectively. The campaign mechanics were simple, to order pizza using the twitter app, with an objective to buy anywhere, and anyhow (Schuman).
The idea of posting a private perspective, i.e. ordering a pizza, on a public platform, created a viral effect and initiated conversations and augmented sales, with the core of marketing requirement being to follow Domino’s and with the company following the customer back and verifying the order, was marketing at its best.
Domino’s has been able to connect with all target segments in an effective manner, to translate the idea’s into winning marketing programs, impacting positively on the sales, one such campaign that created quite a stir and took aim at Pizza Hut, was the ‘Dominos Pizza School’ (Buss).
A marketing campaign was developed to take aim at Pizza Hut that was getting lots of attention for the hot dog bites pizza, the micro site that was launched with the campaign was for the customers to be able to understand the different steps of making a pizza, i.e. focusing on the simplicity of the Domino’s pizza and making fun of Pizza Hut.
It has to be noted that Domino’s wanted to focus on the positioning of pizza delivery in most of their marketing campaigns, and as aptly stated by the CEO Patrick Doyle, that Domino’s wants to make the ordering as simple and convenient as possible, and this marketing positioning has continued to grow higher the financial results of the company.
The marketing innovation, of the voice ordering app ‘Dom’, is also one the innovations that Domino’s has been able to launch effectively.
In this age of technology and digital media, Domino’s quickly realized that to be able to create top of the mind awareness and promote the products the mobile marketing experience, needed to be amplified to create maximum, awareness, engagement and interactivity.
The impact of the marketing strategies as mentioned and discussed above, can, be, determined, from the numbers that the company had been able to generate since 2009, as opposed to the competitors, Papa John’s and Pizza Hut.
In March 2015, Domino’s stock has seen a remarkable rise to 1.980%, as compared to 560% for Papa John’s and 155% for Pizza Hut, since 2009, which is a great achievement (Connors).
The marketing tactics of Domino’s are innovative and unprecedented, and being the market leader in the utilizing the digital world, for marketing, the future looks bright, the tactical aspects of affordability and convenience of availability as mentioned in the report are vital for Domino’s growth, and the company needs to keep churning out new strategies and tactics, to stay ahead of the game, locally in the USA and globally.
Works Cited
Buss, Dale. Domino’s Schools Pizza Hut in New Campaign Focused on the Basics 2015.
Brand Channel. Web 05 May, 2016.
Connors, Ryan. The Data Confirms It: Domino’s Has A Winning Mobile Customer Experience2015.
Business 2 Community. Web 05 May, 2016.
International. A Global Brand 2016. Dominos. Web 05 May, 2016.
Klaassen, Abbey. Domino’s Talks Radical Authenticity 2010. Ad Age. Web 05 May, 2016.
Schuman, Evan. Domino’s tweet-to-eat campaign is sneaky social media at its best 2015. Computer World.
Web 05 May, 2016.
