“Mobile ordering is going to be the easiest connect between consumers and Domino’s”: Harneet Singh Rajpal

The pizza retailer, Domino’s Pizza, has unveiled a new positioning for its brand in India with an objective of finding a deeper emotional connect with its target audience.

Moving on from its four-year old brand identity, “Khushiyon Ki Home Delivery”, Domino’s Pizza has launched a 360-degree communication blitz built around its new avatar, “Yeh Hai Rishton Ka Time”.

“We started out in 1996 with a brand positioning of ‘Hungry Kya’ to build our product and services while educating the Indian consumer about pizza as a food choice. Once it evolved from a niche food to a mass one and we firmly established our delivery proposition, we moved on from an easily replicated functional platform to a more emotional one, with ‘Khushiyan or Happiness’ as the brand connect,” explained Harneet Singh Rajpal, vice president, marketing, Domino’s Pizza India.

However, according to Rajpal, within the last four years around 30-35 brands in India have built their campaigns with ‘Happiness’ in their tag line; making ‘khushi’ a highly diffused space for a strong brand to be present in. “We needed to own the space we play in and saw the need to evolve without changing the brand personality,” he added.

The campaign that has been created by Contract Advertising, essentially builds on a consumer insight that in the current age while there is a scheduled time for everything, very little time is earmarked towards building and nurturing relationships. Domino’s Pizza, thus plugged the gap of being that facilitator that created stronger, warmer and livelier bonds with friends, family and colleagues. “Now ‘Pizza Time’ is not just about pizzas but about creating time for relationships,” Azazul Haq, senior creative director and associate VP, Contract Advertising. The proposition has been articulated in a TVC that showcases various montages of people in varied relationships across age groups and geographies. “In each sequence, a memorable story is being created over slices of Domino’s Pizza.”

Taking cue from its global offices, Domino’s Pizza India has earmarked 5-8 per cent of its annual marketing spends towards the digital media that will only grow in the coming years. “With a product like ours, the digital platform is the root to the future engagements with our consumers. We already have a Facebook fan page following of 2.1 million fans, making us the largest in the food category. We are piggybacking on this fan-base to take the new positioning forward,” added Rajpal.

eCommerce is yet another growth engine for Domino’s Pizza. “Almost 12-13 per cent of our delivery sales are coming from the eCommerce portal and with a ‘pizza tracker’ application on the portal, which allows the consumers to track their pizza, we are seeing the numbers grow every month,” said Rajpal. “We have been at the forefront of using technology and were the first food services company in India to launch Online Ordering service nationally. Within two months of its launch, 2 lakh apps have been downloaded on various mobile platforms such as iPhone, Andriod, Symbian(J2me) and Blackberry. We have been pleasantly surprised at the way Tel-commerce has taken off in India and believe that mobile ordering is going to be an easiest connect between consumers and Domino’s soon.”

Domino’s digital agency is Blazer and they use Go Vivek Go for their social media campaigns.

Domino’s Pizza has 55 per cent market share in organized pizza segment and a 70 per cent share in organized pizza home delivery segment.

Credits:

Client: Domino’s Pizza
Agency: Contract Advertising, Gurgaon
Project: Domino’s Brand Campaign
Chairman: Ravi Deshpande
Executive creative Director: Nima Namchu
Creative Directors: Azazul Haque, Somenath Chakraborty
Writers: Nima D T Namchu & Azazul Haque
Creative team: Uddipta Borah, Debmalaya Mitra, Neha Bhargava, A R Rahul, Tanweer Alam, Shachi Kaul, Ata Husain
Account management team: Prashant Mathur, Bhaskar Ghosh, Ashit Chakravarty, Jatin Tyagi, Mainodi Nunisa, Virender Bhawnani
Films department: Sugato Roy
Production house: Dungarpur Films
Director: Shivendra Singh Dungapur
Media agency: Madison
Digital Agency: Quasar