1. What are the key brand differentiators for your marketing mix?
Pizza is amazing. When you believe that, you’ll be willing to do things that other pizza companies won’t. We innovate and take action to demonstrate this belief.
In many ways, our products are our muses. Pizza brings people together. Pizza is the first meal in a new home. Pizza is a reason to throw a party. Pizza can erase mistakes. Pizza is the post-race celebration. Pizza is comfort after loss. Pizza is shareable. Pizza is brainstorming food. Pizza is late at the office. Pizza magically appears at your door. Pizza transcends class, status and culture.
At the same time, our brand DNA is takeout – we basically invented the concept of takeaway food in 1960, and we’ve been focused on how to do it faster, safer, less friction and more magically than anyone to this point else. When a delivery company starts investing in food delivery, the opportunities to look at the best parts of delivery and apply them to the delivery experience are endless.
2. What is your marketing budget as a percentage of revenue? (No need to answer!)
can’t answer
3. Who is your target audience?
Anyone with a stomach.
4. What are the initial steps of the campaign?
We are always looking for innovations across products, services and image. We identify a brand behavior that surprises consumers and is both attractive and persuasive to consumers. From there, we pitched the idea to our creative agency, Work In Progress, and they came up with the concept. Then we pick the strongest direction, they build TV scripts and 360 social and paid digital extensions.
5. Seems like a lot of your marketing stems from an abundance mindset – filling potholes, helping communities, helping small businesses, “free”, tips – curious how an abundance mindset is taught or promoted in the company culture, if at all?
This is a very interesting observation. Some of our most impactful and memorable work – the examples you mentioned like Paving for Pizza and Local Surprises for small businesses – really come from where problem solving helps consumers by driving value and transparency and community. Our culture is consumer first, and we’re all obsessed with making each pizza experience better and more amazing, one pizza at a time.
6. When will the vegan pizza be available?
We’ve been exploring and testing, and know there’s a passionate following that loves 100% vegan pizza.
7. Did you hire a marketing firm or an in-house marketing firm?
We have the pleasure of partnering with a premier creative agency in Boulder, Colorado called Work in Progress. They are incredible partners who can help develop crazy big ideas and then build visual stories that bring them to life across all touchpoints.
8. Do you consider yourself a technology company first and foremost? How would you view yourself today – a tech company or a pizza company?
We’re a tech company obsessed with pizza. In some ways, we’re a pizza-obsessed logistics company — always innovating to make things easier and remove any friction from the process.
9. What is your internal team structure that allows for faster approvals/posting on social media?
Our content is planned a month in advance and reviewed by key internal teams and the legal department. Advertisement is our final approval for fast approval of trends we want to catch up on as soon as possible. Given the social nature, quick approval is sometimes required and they are more than happy to step in and help (everyone here has a heart for social!).
10. Why don’t you have any professional photos on your feed? Is this part of your strategy?
This is definitely part of our strategy! We love showing how our product really is – no frills, no filters, just mouth-watering pizza (or what we internally call “pizza porn”…). Similar to how our real product is used in TV (no fake ‘glue’ cheese or fake toppings – it has to be eaten after the fact to meet our standards), we are ‘very honest’ about presenting ours in this way Real menu items any customer will receive them. However, we are at the stage of experimenting with new strategies on our social channels that don’t necessarily focus on food imagery (i.e. memes). pay attention to!
11. Curious about the strategy of focusing on promotions and services rather than products in advertising
We do both – we have high demands on product innovation. We don’t do LTO like most QSRs – we just want to add products that are attractive enough to drive the mix high enough to stay on the line and earn their survival in our operations.
12. How do you pre-test your TV commercial concepts so you know what works best for the market?
We occasionally run tests to verify the relevance, uniqueness, and persuasiveness of concepts, but generally, we trust our marketing instincts about which ideas are bold enough to break through. We copy test our TV ads.
13. How big is your social team?
We have two internal people leading our core organic social content, but we have many people in different departments (customer service, advertising, marketing, PR) as extensions of the team (including WIP).
14. What drives most of your campaign decisions? Brand awareness or a hard sell?
Driving incremental orders is our main KPI. We also tracked other secondary KPIs such as awareness, quality, taste and value.
15. Which digital marketing platforms do you think are the most effective?
We only run media on platforms that drive return on ad spend — you can see where we’re investing, and it tends to be where the majority of consumers spend their time, which happens to be ad-supported. And we always try to be organic and native to the platform.
16. Has any ad in the past surprised you how well it performed?
You usually have a good idea of what’s going to really blow up, whether it’s a pizza pavement or a to-go tip. Carryout Insurance was so successful that we were able to use it for a second campaign, which was also hard work for us, so it’s good to validate, sometimes we get tired of ideas before consumers.
17. How old is the person who runs your social networking site?
27
18. What are your top three marketing areas?
Carryout, Delivery, Carside Delivery by Domino’s.
19. If one could only do one thing well in marketing, what would it be?
Build great products – product quality comes first, and everything else grows from there.
20. Is there any pressure to start marketing to younger generations? How do you walk that line?
Young and old alike love pizza, and we’re focusing our marketing on adults who love pizza. We know that adults with children are a large part of our customer base, and kids seem to have a natural love for pizza, but our goal is always to market to pizza-crazy adults.
21. What is the reason for the $3 savings in pickup versus delivery?
Carryout consumers feel like they’re doing a real job driving/trafficing/finding food and go home with a prize. They’re happy to be recognized for their work — and that’s what drives more frequency and digital orders, which leads to higher fares.
22. Discount code? ! 😉
While we’re unable to offer discount codes at this time, we’re happy to share 10 $50 Domino’s e-Gift Cards that Amber can gift to her fans.