Domino’s ramps up content drive after football sitcom boost sales
Domino’s is planning to serve up more branded content such as webisodes after revealing its online football sitcom had a notable impact on viewers’ purchasing intent last year.
Commenting on its financial results for 2013, the pizza brand said its 12-episode mini-series “Support Group” proved a “massive success” with those customers who watched it 15 times more likely to go and purchase Domino’s products than they were before.
It tracked people that viewed the show and then went to place an order comparing their purchase history before watching it with their ordering frequency after. The results were then compared to a ‘control’ group of people who had not watched.
The show centred on a group of friends discussing and joking with one another about the past week’s football news.
Domino’s worked with agencies Arena and Unruly to boost the sitcom’s reach to football bloggers and fan sites but ran into difficulties distributing the series quickly and at scale. It is using the insights to develop more return on cost-effective content strategies that could lead to the creation of future web series as well as tie-ups with creative talent.
Nick Dutch, head of digital marketing at Domino’s, says: “The Support Group really opened our eyes to the potential of creating original content and the positive impact it can have on purchasing behaviour of customers. That said, it also highlighted some of the difficulties around content distribution and building scale fast.
“For us, that means we’ll continue to explore opportunities around content development but may not be entirely wedded to it being created solely by us. It could mean we are more open to working with either already established content creators or finding great up and coming talent we can partner with.”
The move continues the brand’s push to become a media owner capable of driving orders through its own paid channels. It is planning to revamp its site later this year to accelerate the shift.
The strategy helped lift sales in 2013 with Domino’s also crediting its burgeoning eCRM programme and targeted digital promotions.
The pizza chain’s like-for-like sales in the UK were up 7 per cent year-on-year in the period, up from the 5.2 per cent lift in 2012. Mobile sales jumped 94 per cent to account for nearly 31 per cent of all online sales.
Like-for-like sales in the first seven weeks of 2014 are up 14 per cent.