Domino’s Pizza and its self-deprecating marketing campaign is a great example of how to reposition a brand.
Repositioning is simply business-speak for trying to change someone’s opinion. Now think about how hard that can be – especially once you’ve already made a first impression. So, in Domino’s case, their current campaign is trying to convince pizza-eaters that they should forget their first impressions. According to Domino’s internal research, their biggest customer segment – college students – literally matriculate away from their brand as they get older and are no longer price sensitive. Instead, they’re focused more on quality and taste. Domino’s realized this attrition offered a sizable opportunity for growth.
Most companies would have used the “new and improved” approach to their campaign, but nowadays everything is “new and improved” so they would’ve easily gotten lost in the white noise. So, how did they reasonably reposition the brand?
Redesign. If you’re repositioning a product, then it better be different.
Tell a relevantstory. Tell me how you redesigned the product. Domino’s has been really transparent in its campaign and the story has resonated with lots of people. The Reason — footage highlighting the negativefeelings toward its pizza fit with our currentimpression of the pizza. By acknowledging this part of the story, i.e. understanding the attitudes and opinions of its target audience, their message fit with our worldview. Since we bought into the first part of the story, Domino’s was given permission to tell the rest of the story of how they’ve changed.
Delivering on new positioning i.e. your promise. This one is self-explanatory. Remember when Oldsmobile wanted to gear its brand to a younger audience and launched with the tagline ‘Not your father’s Oldsmobile.” It wasn’t believable because the vehicle didn’t deliver what younger customers were looking for. For Domino’s to not make this kind of blunder, they need to make sure their pizza tastes better i.e. deliver on new positioning. But, to help its audience out, establish some metrics to show that people think it’s better i.e. blind taste tests, increase in sales, customer testimonials, posts on social media sites, etc.
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