It Takes a Thick Skin to Make a Tastier Pizza

ItsAGreenOne tweeted last night that Domino’s new pizza recipe is “worse than before. We won’t be reordering from them.”

That’s a pretty mild flame, of course. Except that the tweet appeared on Domino’s own website, part of a growing list of “live comments” about the company’s new pizza recipe, launched earlier in December.

I don’t know if I’d like Domino’s new pizza—surveying the comments, the results are mixed—but I do love the brutal honesty of the restaurant chain’s new “Pizza Turnaround” marketing campaign.

Check out the video above (the first two minutes will do) and you’ll see what I mean. It takes guts to tell the world that customers thought its old recipe was “the worst excuse for pizza I ever had.”

The “mea culpa” marketing strategy couldn’t be more on target, especially in trying to appeal to young and increasingly skeptical consumers who don’t trust “big” anything—especially big businesses. Now the hard part: The company better deliver a truly tasty pizza. 

This is the second time this year that Domino’s has distinguished itself as a savvy social media marketer. (Although they learned the hard way the first time through.) Maybe good things really are cooking in Ann Arbor.

Update on Tue, January 5, 2010 at 10:47AM by Frank J. Oswald

ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE. Shared by a friend: What about people who liked Domino’s old recipe? Could this campaign actually turn them off? And what happens, then, if the new recipe doesn’t attract new customers? Could this be “New Coke” redux? I guess the proof will be in the pizza.