I wrote here recently about bad messaging in the form of a prominent Domino’s Pizza campaign that tried to merge what they used to do successfully with their current failures. The campaign was a mess and reminds us that the most fundamental aspect of marketing anything is to make yourself look either good, genuine or as a problem solver.
I rail against bad marketing messages because—in all honesty—it should be extinct. It isn’t because half-brained decision-makers engage creative types stuck in the ‘90s to solve marketing problems cast too narrowly or self-centered. That’s the equivalent of asking the Wright Brothers how to create an effective aircraft carrier. As such Domino’s is high on my radar—I’ve been intrigued as to how they’ll overcome their recent, silly mistake. I am still waiting.
Their latest incarnation of what unfortunately cements them as a sad and failing brand is found in a campaign concept so goofy (and to be honest), so narrow in its communicative intent as to leave the professional reviewer wondering if anyone over at pizza HQ is paying attention to ANYTHING except internal politics. Now in the name of hawking pizzas, Dominos has ridiculed those of us who may wish to enjoy a saucy, starchy product by phone order for those who commit to said transaction digitally. In the latest ad Domino’s is PROMOTING its own inability to effectively answer the phone (at a pizza shop remember) in the name of driving inbound traffic to an exclusive web-order transaction.
Let’s give them the benefit of doubt, surely there must be a good reason why an Internet pizza transaction supersedes the value of a phone order. I can easily imagine that. But I sure can’t get why to drive such traffic the preferred marketing message is to contrastingly trash those (and themselves) who resort to the “old school” fashion of pizza order by phone.
That no one at Domino’s caught all of this suggests it may not possess anyone with any marketing whiskers—or worse—fundamental understanding of marketing communications. The error— I mean accumulated errors—are so obvious and so basic as to suggest that either the marketing department is asleep or being run by an ambitious undergrad completing her senior project. The Domino’s brand is a mess and quite simply becoming worse with every advertising iteration.
John Durante is marketing services director for WordWrite Communications
