Sam’s Favorite Brand: Domino’s

I’ve interviewed for a lot of jobs. And if you interview for enough jobs, eventually you start hearing the same questions.

As a marketer, one of those questions I always seem to get is “What’s your favorite brand?” The question comes in different forms. “What’s your favorite brand and why?” “What’s a brand you think is marketed well?” “What’s a brand you think is taking strong advantage of consumer trends?” These are all ways to elicit the same information.

There are so many great brands out there, so it’s hard to choose just one. Yet, almost every time, I end up using the same one: Domino’s. And in honor of National Pizza Day, which apparently was yesterday, I’d like to explain why it’s my favorite. 

Why Domino’s?

When I was in business school, we went through hours of interview training. We were told to use very specific frameworks to answer the “good brand” question – namely the 4Ps (product, price, place and promotion).

And yes, Domino’s does well in those areas. But when asked to expand on my thoughts, I go off script. Instead, I point out its outstanding marketing began a long, long time ago (cue Star Wars theme song) – all the way back in December 2009.

The company wasn’t doing well. Sales were falling. It was losing market share. Its stock price was under $8, compared to about $275 today. (And no, you smart aleck — I’m not sure if there were reverse stock splits and I don’t care to do further research, this was according to Google Finance.) Sure, some of the poor performance was attributable to an economy in the toilet. But a lot of it was due to the company’s lack of innovation (read: sh*tty pizza).

It was at this time the company released a YouTube video entitled “Domino’s? Pizza Turnaround”:

If you’re too busy viewing cat memes to watch the whole piece, here’s the Cliff's Notes version: it shows footage of focus group participants ripping on the pizza and Domino’s employees reading mean tweets. They weren’t wrong – I remember in college I would stop ordering from there because that crust really tasted like cardboard.

In the second half of the video, the Domino’s culinary team is hard at work discussing its recipe changes, committed to turning around the product. In a follow-up video, Domino’s chefs revisit the focus group participants with a new pizza. Perhaps it’s a little set up, but the participants genuinely seem impressed with the pizza turnaround.

Ever since those videos dropped, Domino’s has been on a 10-plus year tear. Yes, the pizza is new and greatly improved. But it’s built upon that success in other ways:

Technology/Digital: I said in a previous post that Domino’s calling itself a “technology company that sells pizza” is tacky and arrogant. Nevertheless, the company has built out technological capabilities that surpasses its peers many times over. Its mobile ordering is, in my opinion, a nearly frictionless user experience. Its GPS delivery tracker was very novel at the time. They're even partnering with Ford on autonomous delivery.

(This article in Restaurant Business goes into more depth about what Domino’s is doing from a technology perspective).

The company has kicked ass from a digital and social perspective as well. Among the campaigns that have been on-point has been the Domino’s delivery bell and the ability to order pizza with an emoji. I’ve heard that maybe five people in the U.S. ordered pizza this way. But that’s not the point – it led to a surge of attention and displayed Domino’s digital/social prowess.

Cultural Relevance: Domino’s has had many campaigns of cultural relevance in the last 10 years. My favorite initiative has been “Paving for Pizza” where towns could bid for funds to fix potholes. It was a clever attention grabber and showed, in such a clever way, how much care the company has for its customers and the quality of its pizza.

The Lessons from Domino’s Turnaround

Unless this is a job interview, merely giving you a rundown of my favorite brand feels like a waste of time – there needs to be some key lessons we can learn from Domino’s. There’s two that come to mind:

It’s The Product, Stupid: When I was a marketing teaching assistant discussing the 4Ps with my students, I remember several asked “what is the most important of the 4Ps?” The answer I was supposed to give was, “they’re equally important, with more emphasis needed on certain Ps depending on factors such as its place on the product lifecycle, yada yada.”

Bulls**t! Product is the most important! It’s the neck that moves the rest of the body, and Domino’s is a prime example of that. GPS tracking, Pizza emojis, fixing potholes — it would all be worthless unless the company underwent that recipe refresh more than 10 years ago.

Mark Zuckerberg has said, “It’s not what you say, it’s what you build.” He understands that marketing is hollow without a great product. Therefore, great marketers need to be actively intertwined with product development and innovation.  

Just Own It: Rarely does a brand come forward and admit in a vulnerable way that it needs to change. When brands do, its often because they’ve enmeshed themselves in scandal – BP, Facebook and Volkswagen are a few that come to mind.

But those are not the norm. Sure, brands will put out marketing messages trying to convince you that, indeed, they’re great. They’ll offer discounts on top of discounts. And sure, they may even go ahead and make changes to its product based on consumer preferences. But it’s usually done discreetly.

What I love about the Domino’s video is it showed so much respect to its customers in such a public fashion. They basically said, “Hey, we love our customers. We need to do better. And we’re committed to doing so!” Brands committed to their customers should *publicly* own up to their faults and show they’re ready to do the work it takes to win trust!

Do you agree with my thoughts? What are your favorite brands? Also, how does something like National Pizza Day become an official holiday? Please enlighten me in the comments. And please check out some of my other articles:

Marketing: More Art or Science?

A Problem Smartphone User Discusses The Future of Connectivity

A Lesson in Capitalism: My Trip to the Mall