Chado-Design.com

Earlier this year Dominoes pizza launched a new campaign in an attempt to re-brand their pizza. With consumer behavior shifting towards natural foods and gourmet offerings Dominoes adapted by changing their recipe and using better quality ingredients to improve the taste. To announce this they chose a risky campaign where they would admit that their then-current recipe tasted bad and quoted customers saying the crust is like cardboard and the sauce tastes like ketchup. It seemed like a huge risk openly admitting to your customers that you have knowingly been selling them a bad product for over fifty years. Also, the existing Dominoes customers are not buying their pizza for its superior taste, they are buying it for convenience. I personally thought this ad would backfire and burn bridges causing Dominoes to lose their loyal customers that still continue to eat their pizza in spite of all the better alternatives available.
Although it was extremely risky for the brand to devalue all their past brand messages and product lines, this campaign accomplished exactly what it set out to do; it got people talking about the brand again. “New and Improved” is one of the most overused phrases in marketing and simply communicating that they have a new recipe wouldn’t have been as effective without publicly bashing their product beforehand. In early January when the campaign launched, people were actually talking, tweeting, and blogging about Dominoes and the brand received more attention than it has in the past decade.
Yesterday it was reported that their new recipe and brutally honest campaign has been a success, at least in the short term, as Dominoes has more than doubled its fourth-quarter profit with curious customers trying their new recipe. Time will tell if this success will last but this early victory has been very interesting. As long as they can keep the momentum going and the novelty does not wear off, Dominoes big gamble with their brand will be well worth the risk.