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The 1 Weird Thing Domino’s Pizza Taught Me About Eating Real Food
The other day, I saw a story about Domino’s Pizza and their “risky” new ad campaign. They were playing against type, admitting in the advertisements that their old pizza wasn’t very good, showing focus groups teeming with customer dissatisfaction, and pretty much saying — hey, you know that pizza we’ve been selling you for the past, oh, 25 years? It’s crap! And we know it!
Domino’s is Admitting Their Old Pizza Was No Good.
I’m not begrudging Domino’s marketing department (or whatever ad agency thought this up) — it takes some serious cojones to admit the one product you built your nationwide brand on isn’t really that good, and there isn’t exactly a storied tradition of companies doing this to great effect (New Coke).
But what really grabbed me was this — there’s something great about finding a new way to see an aspect of our lives (in this case, food): something that always used to trick you every time is suddenly exposed for what it is, and you feel like you’re seeing it, with all its flaws, for the first time.
What Domino’s is Trying to Convince Us Of.
Before, I might have watched the skillfully put-together documentary up on the Domino’s site and accepted some of its more subtle conclusions without batting an eye. Stuff like:
- Professional chefs in white robes prepare Domino’s pizza
- Said pizza is prepared in what seems like a kitchen
- Real ingredients appear to be involved
- Domino’s employs people who have been ‘making pizza’ for 25 years
- They care about more than just “adding a little something to the recipe”
Even though I know Domino’s is, at heart, a fast-food franchise, you might have had me fooled (or at least curious) with that video, at least before. Now, though, after Food, Inc., and Michael Pollan, and all the conversation and discovery we’ve had here on the site about real food, I only see one thing in this video. And what is that?
Cheap centralization.
This Isn’t A Restaurant, It’s a Corporate HQ!
Nothing about this video says ‘food’. Rather, it’s a test kitchen on a corporate campus, or maybe just in a studio somewhere. It seems more like… a laboratory than a pizza joint.
And that’s the point — it is a lab. The sauce has sugar. The cheese has to last for months. The ham is cured with 5 different sodium-based curing agents. The sausage has corn syrup solids. God knows where the vegetables come from.
All of this stuff is sorted out at the corporate HQ, delivered from a central facility, nickel-and-dimed to the last degree to maximize return, and then marketed as great, honest pizza, made by passionate people who care about “really good ingredients,” which is probably why the first ingredient for Domino’s ‘white sauce’ is soybean oil, along with 7 other preservatives.
If an honest marketing campaign just went ahead and showed us the factory where all those ingredients are put together (yeah, this’ll happen), we might be a little closer to reality.
You Want Real Pizza?
In the meantime, take a look at this video right here (colorful language warning!). This is an example of pizza with passion, of true care about ingredients, of a dedication to ‘real’ food that can’t survive elaborate franchising and centralization.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz91GfoZ-Zs[/youtube]
It’s a great feeling — being able to decode, however simply, the truth behind the way our food is advertised, and the more you do it, the better you’ll eat.
What Food Marketing Drives You Nuts?
Have any examples to share of crazy food marketing that really drives you crazy? Typical food-like substances trying their hardest to convince you that they’re wonderful for you? Share them with us — there’s nothing we like more than a good comment venting session!
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