Domino’s Pizza Mogul puts product creation and marketing in consumers’ hands

Domino’s has launched a co-creation initiative that allows customers to design their own pizza, share it through their social networks, and get paid between $0.25 to $4.50 every time someone buys it.

The Pizza Mogul online portal puts product development directly into the consumer’s hands by allowing them to mix and match their own pizza using a drag-and-drop menu of ingredients. Users can choose a limited amount of topping worth up to $4.50 for their pizza, then share their creation via social networks to earn a commission.

Those less adventurous consumers can also share an existing pizza range through social networks and still get paid for it.

Domino’s CMO, Allan Collins, said the program turns marketing strategy and product development on its side by giving the power to the consumer.

“Rather than it just be a small team of marketers based in the head office here using various agencies to persuade consumers to why they should be buying Domino’s pizza, we now have a whole army of people selling their pizzas, engaging with Domino’s and spreading the word about the pizza they created,” he said.

Domino’s will use Salesforce’s Radian6 social listening platform, as well as Pizza Mogul sale records, for sentiment analysis on the most well-received consumer-created pizzas and develop new product lines based on the results.

Domino’s will also use content created by customers in its online, TV and other advertising materials.

“It’s a fundamental shift in how you market a brand. Instead of us designing our promotional calendars or what new products we will launch, I’m going to look at the Pizza Mogul system,” Collins continued. “It’s all in the consumers’ hands; they’ve got all the power. We are providing a platform to allow that to happen.”

The new initiative also allows Domino’s to tap into the growing consumer trend where people – especially young people – take photos of their food at restaurants and post it on Instagram, Collins said.

“For some people, it’s not just about earning money it’s about ‘Look, I have the top selling pizza that week’,” Collins said.

“The perfect dream is where someone does a really cool six-second video or a series of Instagram pictures, and I’ll take that if they have a big number of followers and I’ll use that for our advertising. So I’m using consumer-generated material for our national media where the consumer is the hero.”

Pizza Mogul also means charities can design their own pizzas for specific causes. “If it’s prostate week, for example, they can design a pizza and put extra tomato sauce and extra tomatoes as they are good for prostate, and market that to their own members,” Collins added.

“Every time one of their members buys that pizza, they earn money for the charity.”

According to Ian Kelsall of ThoughtWorks, the company that helped develop the technology for Mogul, each pizza is associated with a particular Mogul account on creation, and the Domino's website records the transaction when a pizza is sold. The account is credited the amount according to the number of chargeable toppings that were on the pizza. Consumers can get can cash out when they have earned a minimum of 5 Mogul Dough, with a 1:1 conversion rate to Australian Dollars.

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