I know almost everyone has seen Dominos Pizza’s new ad campaign. The company is painfully honest about people’s comments about their pizza, which include comparing the crust to cardboard and the sauce to ketchup. They are offering a 100% money-back guarantee on their new and improved pizzas. They also have a website with a live feed of Twitter comments about their new pizzas.
The internet is filled with people’s opinions about this approach and its potential success or failure. This may or may not help the company overcome its many recent PR nightmares. But it has been reported in The Brandweek Buzz Report by YouGov that Dominos’ positive buzz score has increased from 2.3 to 35.3 (out of 100), since the campaign began. Whether this leads to a permanent shift in perception for the brand is yet to be seen.
What is interesting, though, is that Dominos is taking this risky approach. I think they realized they had to. Since the dawn of man, bad news has always traveled a million times faster than good news. Dominos experienced this with the unfortunate YouTube experience last year. Maybe that social media lesson is what led to their current campaign.
Beyond the stark honesty, they are actively incorporating social networking sites into their ad campaign. While many large corporations have a presence on Facebook and Twitter, the communication is frequently one-way – toward the customer. Dominos is encouraging communication from the customer, and they are acting upon what they are being told. As things continue to evolve, companies are going to have to interact this way. If a customer feels screwed over, trust me, everyone that follows them and has friended them, will hear about it.
By going on the offensive, Dominos is giving the customer (or potential customer) the chance to support them with positive comments. If that’s what happens, it will should help Dominos, because a third-party endorsement carries a lot of weight. If it goes the other direction the damage will be huge.
The world is continuing to change. Keep this in mind when making decisions or reacting to problems. If your company does everything right, people may tell their online community, but if you do something wrong, they will tell them.
