The #DomiCopter
Domino’s Pizza UK
Issue 28 | September 2013
Agency
Big Communications
Creative Team
Executive Creative Director: Dylan Bogg Senior Copywriter: James Cross Senior Art Director: Tim Jones Creative Technologist: Tom Hatton (T+ Biscuits Ltd)
Production Team
Director: Tim Jones Photography and Drones: Dean Wynton (Aerosight UK Ltd) Editor: Leigh Radford Nicholls
Other Credits
Account Director: Dan Caputo
Date
June 2013
Background
With Domino’s social presence stalling, Big worked together with T + Biscuits to find an innovative way of re-engaging Domino’s UK fans and followers with the brand.
Idea
To amplify Domino’s positioning around ‘extraordinary deliveries’, a short, 60-second film was shot, showing how Domino’s were testing out drones as a new and high-speed way of getting pizzas to hungry customers.
Originally the film was scheduled to be released online on April 1st but realising there would be a plethora of other April Fools Day spoofs, the agency held back until June 3rd.
The decision was made that Domino’s would make no comments to the press about the film, neither confirming nor denying that the film was a stunt or for real. This would give the film a better chance of going viral.
The film is at: http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=on4DRTUvst0
Results
On YouTube, the video has been re-published by over 30 different users. The original post has re- ceived over 1,300,000 views.
On Twitter, 1,140,135 tweets mentioned ‘Flying Pizza’, 6,931,711 tweets mentioned ‘Pizza Drone’, and 10,737,919 tweets mentioned ‘DomiCopter’ according to Topsy and DailyTrend. Total Twitter activity is an estimated 21,140,770 tweets.
In the UK, the story was covered by the Daily Mail, Huffington Post UK, Sky News, Daily Telegraph and a host of technology blogs.
In the USA, it was featured on The Jay Leno Show, Fox News New York, Bloomberg TV, NBC Sunrise and CNN. Elsewhere it was featured on Indian State News and Australian TV.
Our Thoughts
This is one of those campaigns, which Grant Hunter and Jon Burkhart write about in ‘Newsjacking’ (see pages 7-12).
It’s a pleasantly old-fashioned idea (dramatising extraordinary deliveries) but put out in real-time rather than in bought time. The interesting thing is, when people realise it’s an advertising message, they don’t resent it, rather they applaud the cleverness of it in overcoming their natural indifference. And then they begin debating whether delivery by drone really could be the future.
That said, it is plain from the comments on YouTube that there are many people who believe that this is for real.
Either way, what a great space for Domino’s to find themselves in – a company dedicated to getting its pizzas to its customers fast.