Commercial Strategy Change

I nearly doubled over when I saw a TV commercial the other day. In it, Domino's trashes its old pizza, then introduces a new one that it says is far superior. It goes on to list all the awful things about the pizza it has been selling (and praising in commercials) for years and years. Odd, huh! A food vendor saying what it has been selling to you and promoting as superior was in fact, "like cardboard"? Why would any consumer believe that Dominoes is truthful and sincere about its pizza now, but wasn't before? Is that a good way to market a product. Well, at least it'san original one.

The logic Dominos used in making and running the commercial all month is that it had had no choice but to be honest about its old recipe pizza if it had any hope of winning back customers and inspiring their taste buds enough to make them by Domino's pizza. And to do it they used disgruntled customers who described why they hated the old Domino's pizza but think the new recipe dough and toppings are superior. They did not mention that daintily.

On the commercial I saw (there are several similar ones running now) one customer said the old Domino pizza was "totally devoid of taste". Another said it was "worse than microwave pizza". Ouch! Microwave pizza is awful.

Domino's ranks as the number two pizza seller in the U.S. with many loyal customers who never buy from other pizza sellers. My least favorite pizza seller, Pizza Hut, is number one. Hmmmmmmm I think the taste of pizza is a specialized one. It would be very difficult to get a consensus on what good pizza is. But for Domino's to trash it's pizza in order to promote it's new pizza is a risky tactic. It would be sure to work only if the majority agree the original pizza product was faulty in taste. But the loyal customers that have been buying Domino's pizza think it was not. Might Domino's lose some of it's loyal customers who find the new product not to their liking? And will it win over enough new customers to make up for that loss?

In the food service business the mantra usual is that good food will sell itself and bad food can't be sold by any means..including commercials that say "we used to be terrible but never admitted it until now". Better to just praise the alleged benefits of the new formula Domino's is using in its pizza and let the customers taste for themselves.

My daughter likes pizza so, yes, I had to buy a "new" Domino pizza the next day to see if it was really new and improved. It wasn't, at least not to my taste. I am not a Domino fan anyway (of the fast food pizza sellers, I prefer 'Papa John'). But the newer version of Domino's was way too heavy on herbs and has an even more bitter sauce that the previous one. The cheese...well..that always is low grade process cheese no matter which fast good chain puts it on the pizza. More of that isn't necessarily better.

If I were grading the new Domino pizza I would give it a 'D'. The old version was far better and would get a "C+". But then....the best piece of fast food pizza I ever had I ate by accident in the early nineties, in Moscow, Russia where a guy with a tray of pizza was vending in the famous Arbat square (where free market business conducted in U.S. dollars was illegal but flourishing). I managed to get a slice of heaven that day and finding a better pizza has still eluded me.
As I wrote above, pizza preference is very nebulous one. So perhaps is how it is advertised. We shall see if those commercials work