Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts • Spotify
Fast food and fast food restaurant brands have had a rough go of it in the past few years as customers have struggled to save a few bucks amid rising food prices and inflation. Parts of the brand playbook seem to be overwritten with things like $5 deals to make consumers feel like they’re getting more bang for their buck.
It’s a story all too familiar to Domino’s, the more than 60-year-old pizza brand that has pushed its way through branded breaks to try to win back customers who have stopped dining. There were the “30 Minutes or Less” campaigns of the 1990s, the Pizza Turnaround in 2010 (when the pizza chain recognized that the recipe needed work) The Pizza Paving in 2018, where Domino’s roads were paved so that pizzas arrived to customers in good condition status, and today’s Emergency Pizza, a pizza topping for so-called emergencies like a burnt dinner.
On this episode of the Digiday podcast, Kate Trumbull, senior executive and CMO of Domino’s, joins co-host and senior marketing reporter Kimeko McCoy to talk about the Domino’s brand playbook.
Here are some highlights from the conversation, which have been edited for length and clarity.
A campaign two years in the making
We wanted to launch it strategically [Emergency Pizza] campaign right after we launched our new loyalty program because we really felt that the free pizza was one of the biggest incentives and reasons to come to us. A loyalty program seems to attract people who are already loyal to you because it’s a lot to ask someone to provide your information. You join loyalty programs when you think you will return many times. And so the free pizza was really the carrot. That was one of the big opportunities, adding loyalty members. In Q4 2023, we added 2 million additional active members to our loyalty program, primarily due to the program.
“Oh yes we did” moments
You see a lot of brands out there [quick service restaurants]when value became so critical [last] year, they ran on: How do I get the lowest price in front of customers to attract them? But the challenge and risk with that is A) Devaluing your product, but B) Everyone is doing the same thing. If everyone is running a $5 special, how do you stand out? You don’t stand out. So for us, “Oh yes we did” [Editor’s note: a Domino’s slogan and previous marketing campaign] is trying to. Provide value, but do it in a way that breaks through that clutter while still feeling very good about owning Domino.
Build your brand with free pizza
At the end of the day, we receive an order from the consumer. As many new consumers come in, it is gradual. Do you also want to calculate and model how many of these customers will return and then what is their lifetime value? You can do all the research in the world. You never know exactly how consumers will react. But because we’ve done so many campaigns like this in the past, we know pretty well what to expect and we know the levers to pull.
