In 1995, 87 Silvio’s Dial-a-Pizza stores became 87 Domino’s stores. MJW Advertising launched Domino’s as a fun, youthful, fresh approach and possibly the world’s longest tag line. “I’ve got the hots for what in the box with the dots.” In their first ten years they’ve achieved a 600 % sales growth and are now the number one pizza company in Australia.
Domino’s and its franchisees now operate 419 stores across Australia and New Zealand. They’ve made the news recently with their delivery of free pizzas to the victims of Cyclone Larry in Innisfail, North Queensland. But what’s getting people talking is their attempt to change the Australian language with the introduction of the word, “puff”, as an expression of coolness. To introduce the puff pastry line, MJW and Domino’s developed a 360 degree advertising campaign around the recasting of ‘puff’ as awesome, wicked, cool, the ultimate. The So Puff microsite, SoPuff.com, features ten puff moments in which young Australians relate the phrase, ‘so puff’ to their everyday life. A woman listening to music in a record store says, “This is a seriously puff album”. A woman doing the moves in Dance Dance Revolution says, “That was totally puff!”.
The site provides its own glossary, redefining phrases such as “Puff On” – A Generation Y term set to replace the past-its-prime saying, Rock On.
Inside specially branded Jetstar jets, “Puffection” is highly visible in overhead lockers and tray tables, along with boarding pass and in-flight magazine promotions.
In an article in BandT, Chris Dibley from MJW claims the inspiration for the campaign came from consumers’ responses during Domino’s Pizza’s product testing.
“Those who loved the product genuinely struggled to find the words to describe it, so we decided this pizza deserved its own word, one that reflected the ‘awesome-ness’ of its unique eating experience,” he said.
Flying Fish were the film production company behind the ads. They contracted Power Studios to do the art-design-airbrush work.
Hi Duncan:
I don’t have any info for your update on the making of the video but I do know about the background of Domino’s Pizza, a US company based in Ann Arbor, MI who’s owner, Tom Monahan is probably best described as strange to weird. He definitely would be upset with the McPassion ad and is in the process of building an all Catholic city in Florida.
At one time Monahan owned the Detroit Tiger baseball team but sold the team to his biggest competitor, Mike Illitch who owns Little Ceasar’s Pizza. The biggest problem is trying to decide which guy makes the worst pizza.
mvs
Eight years later, I can tell you that not once was this used in any fashion outside of ironic and even that died down within months of the ad campaign beginning. It died so, so quickly.
Bad effort. Thanks for trying, pizza.