Diving deep in shallow water.

Let's get back to Domino's, shall we?

Their latest spot begins inside a focus group, presumably a real group, that also ends up being the site of a real dairy farm - a farm whose cows produce the milk that makes the cheese that ends up on their pizza.

Catch all that?

Here's a look:


If you haven't been following my blog, do a search on Domino's and you'll see I've had plenty of good things to say about Domino's rebranding effort. More recently, however, they took a sharp left turn. The latest spot demonstrates more scattered thinking and isn't likely to do them much good.

First, I'm curious when this focus group took place. Curious because the respondent remarks about the cheese, stating she doesn't believe it's "real cheese." With all the money they've thrown at this campaign, one can only hope that by now she doesn't still feel the same.

My larger issue is this: the fundamental issue (I thought) was that people didn't think Domino's pizza TASTES good. The brilliance reflected in the earliest batch of spots was just that - the focus on TASTE.

Domino's CEO came out and revealed the alleged focus group learning; he committed to fixing the TASTE problem. He told us his culinary team reengineered the recipes. He enticed people to give Domino's pizza another try, promising we'd all TASTE the difference and love it.

More recently, they've gotten into ameteur photography contests and other antics that seemed to detract from the underlying taste conversation, and now gone a step further, talking about cows.

Do I think there's something to be gained by showing the origin of ingredients? Perhaps, but not for a fast food pizza brand, at least, not yet.

There's some serious strategy muddling at work here. What food tastes like and where its ingredients are sourced are two different things. Yes, they can overlap, but people who appreciate this type of nuance aren't eating Domino's pizza and if they are, they're throwing caution to the wind.

My message to Domino's is this - find those strategic guardrails and please get back on track. Explore some new topping combinations. Find some more pizza holdouts and prove to America you can win them over with better recipes.

The water is getting deep; it's time to get back to the shallow end.

OFF STRATEGY.