“How many times have you wondered why the products you buy don’t look as good in person as they do in TV ads?”
It was with that question that Domino’s chief marketing officer, Russell Weiner, revealed the brand’s latest marketing coup: the photo promise. No more misleadingly delicious artificial snaps said America’s number one pizza brand this month. From now on, it’s aux natural – photos of pizzas as they actually appear. To compliment the move Domino’s have set up a competition – to get people right across the States to send in their own home pizza shots, with 4 prizes of $500 up for grabs. They also released this video below.
The ‘photo promise’ is the most recent manifestation of what has been a stunningly ballsy and (so far) successful revitalisation of the Domino’s brand over the last 6 months. Market leader for its core values of convenience and low cost, Domino’s had consistently scored very poorly on consumer taste tests. So in December 2009, as the brand celebrated its 50thbirthday, they decided to fundamentally change their pizza recipe. More surprising still, Domino’s focussed the relaunch around a brutal appraisal of their past product quality in this ad, flaunting the fact that consumers thought their crusts were like cardboard and their tomato sauce tasted like ketchup.
Few market-leading brands have marked their 50thyear in business with a complete shakeup of their core product. Even fewer brands have publicly accepted and even deliberately drawn attention to their history of poor product quality. Domino’s did, and have been rewarded with a 14.3% US sales increase in the first quarter of 2010. Will the bubble burst? Will the US-only product change, which has left global consumers with the same old “cardboard” crusts, create wider brand tensions? If the ‘photo promise’ is anything to go by, Russell Weiner and co certainly believe they’re on to a winning strategy.
