#271 2015 · Domino's Pizza / CP+B · Fast food / e-commercelegibility
Domino's got 1.2 billion media impressions from a feature almost nobody actually needed to use
the problem
A genuinely useful convenience feature for existing customers generates almost no press on its own, because 'faster reordering for people already set up' isn't a story
background
Domino's built AnyWare, an ordering system that let customers order through smart TVs, smartwatches, in-car systems and more, aimed at tech-forward, convenience-driven younger customers who already had an account and a saved 'Easy Order' default on file. A genuinely useful feature like this rarely generates press on its own — 'existing customers can reorder their usual pizza slightly faster' is not a headline, even though it is a real convenience improvement for the people it's built for.
Domino's and agency CP+B needed a way to make the underlying feature — instant reordering for an already-configured account — legible and shareable to people who had never set up an account at all, in a form simple enough to go viral on its own.
the move
Domino's let any US customer with a linked Twitter handle or phone number and a saved 'Easy Order' profile place a repeat order of their default pizza by tweeting or texting a single pizza emoji to @dominos, delivered about 30 minutes later. The public pitch — 'tweet an emoji, get a pizza' — was a simplified version of what actually required signing up on Dominos.com and configuring a saved order first, a distinction reporters testing the system on launch day found real friction in, since the tweet-to-order path only worked for users who'd already done that setup.
the payoff
The campaign generated more than 1.2 billion earned media impressions and coverage across USA Today, TIME, Good Morning America, The Today Show and late-night television, with thousands of customers signing up to enable emoji ordering the day it launched — even though, as contemporaneous reporting noted, the feature itself was a convenience add-on for already-onboarded repeat customers rather than a frictionless way for a new customer to order pizza from scratch.
what came after
Emoji Ordering won the Titanium Grand Prix at Cannes Lions 2015, a Grand Clio, and multiple Shorty Awards, and is cited in marketing literature as an example of a simple, shareable public framing generating outsized cultural reach for a feature whose real mechanics were narrower and more conditional than the headline version suggested.
references
- [1]It's Simple: Tweet Emoji. Get Pizza Delivered. Win Grand Prix.Ad Age, 2015adage.com
- [2]Domino's tweet-to-order system isn't as great as it soundsTechCrunch, 2015techcrunch.com