One of the oldest tactical marketing saws in consumer marketing is that when business slackens it is time to change the basis of competitive comparison. When beer sales slide then introduce “born-on” dating to signify date of manufacture or when antacid volume burps add a miniscule amount of calcium to show the product’s “enhanced” health benefits (all the while forgetting the three sausages and six beers that originally created excessive stomach acid)! The fact that such changes create no better product quality or consumer benefit is secondary—what matters is creating something for the marketplace to grab onto to illustrate what you have that the other guy doesn’t.
Another old marketing saw is that the above can take virtually any form provided marketers can convince consumers the new comparison matters. Stamping bottling dates on mass produced and rapidly consumed American brews is a non-starter to anything fresh and the amount of calcium you might find as an additive in your medicine cabinet staples parallel the volume you’d get in chomping on a piece of fruit. As dimensions of product performance these benefits simply don’t matter—that the market thinks they may be important is what matters.
It’s this second guide that has me looking oddly at the current national ad campaign from Dominos. As response to a ceaseless competitive death spiral this restaurant behemoth has set sail on a wave of persuasion that seems hard to swallow.
In a span of about 30 years Dominos went from college town pizza shack to a category pioneer in the rapid delivery pizza category. It was sold in 1999 for $1B to a capital hedge fund. The company ‘domi’nated performance in the category as well as in the accompanying mindset of delivering a quality, freshly cooked pizza in 30 minutes or less. For years nobody could touch them. College kids, frazzled supper time parents and their offspring alike were frequent consumers of the cheap and tasty pies delivered to the doorstep piping hot and quickly. They owned everybody.
Later it seemed the opposite. Eventually everybody had their number. Product quality slipped, marketing was uneven and their reputation suffered. It all set off a dramatic business decline that continues today.
The latest response to all of this is Domino’s now wants to—get this—slow down! Because they are losing at their own game Domino’s is trying mightily to convince us the game of pizza speed they perfected no longer matters. Mind you this isn’t a position pivot of a few degrees—this is a 180—almost a repudiation of the very concept on which they built their original success. It is both a moronic and distressing business move.
Worse the technical execution of this message (at least in visual form) is even more distressing. A common ad might find in the foreground a cheery pizza builder carefully and slowly building a pie all the while background workers zip around at a fast-forward speed to somehow remind us of what was and now what they want to be. The visual simultaneously reminds us that Domino’s is abandoning the very distinction that created its success, that their failure forces them to adopt a different approach AND to give you one last glimpse of what supposedly started their decline. It is hard to imagine that even the most youthful of marketing pros, and more importantly consumers, wouldn’t find the presentation jarring and unappealing. The campaign is sloppy, silly, and sophomoric and one of the worst national advertising campaigns I’ve ever seen.
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John Durante is marketing services director for WordWrite Communications.
