This week Dominos ran a massive campaign to hype an announcement that they called a ‘Game changer’. In what was supposed to be the biggest change to Dominos in 20 years was actually a bitterly disappointing set of new toppings along with square pizza bases.
Tonight Dominos CEO, Don Meij held a Q&A on their Facebook page to try and address some of the concerns of customers. Instead of calming customers, it seems the situation just got worse. The questions and comments show an infuriated and frustrated customers that were further frustrated by Meij answering about a dozen of the 1,000+ questions during the hour. Take a look, some comments are just plain brutal.
The limited responses can be attributed to two possible scenarios. Either Meij isn’t as hot on the keyboard as his pizzas, or the more likely option is that responses were being heavily vetted by a PR team. Whichever the reason, Facebook is now a record of a disastrous promotion that overpromised and under delivered on a level not seen since JB Hi-Fi sales.
The sad thing is there is actually real opportunities for Dominos to make revolutionary changes to the pizza industry. One amazing innovation would be to introduce an Amazon Prime-style subscription for delivery. This would mean Dominos customers would pay an annual flat-fee, then get free delivery on all orders. Obviously they need to work out what price would be financially viable, but the theory goes, without the restriction of delivery cost, people will buy more Pizza.
It also wouldn’t hurt Dominos to extend their tracker app to additional platforms like Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. Overall, it’s hard to see Dominos turning this disaster into a positive, if anything, it’s a wakeup to all companies that consumers do have a voice now thanks to Social Media and we won’t be bulls%*ted to.
