The Campaign

The core idea was to cheer people’s Christmas holiday season’s emotion, helping them to remind special season with a little bit of nostalgic surprising news, to make them feel their dream of childhood could came true, along with picturing happy Pizza party with family. We wanted to present Domino’s Pizza serious about the reindeer pizza delivery project, and identified the company’s official press release as the ideal way to underpin their seriousness. Moreover, this also provided us with an opportunity to position a brand with a higher purpose, that of allowing people to picture the perfect Christmas, along with their pizzas.

Execution

We issued three press releases in three phases: the first was to announce the reindeer pizza delivery plan (this was done through a formal written press release); the second was to release a video showing the progress being made in training the reindeers; the third and final piece was to announce the regrettable postponement of the plan (this was also done in the form of a written release) due to the unforeseen hurdles found. We created a narrative through the three releases, which succeeded in sustaining the media and public attention for a month.

<Tier 1: Media Outputs> TV: 18 Programs (News Shows), Print Media: 27 Newspapers & Magazines, Web Media: 264 sites, Total 309 media. Earned Media: $3,876,421 (Paid Media: $30,501), Media ROI: 12,709% During the first and second phases (announcement of the plan and video update on the reindeer training), the overall reaction conveyed through the media was that of excitement and anticipation (“So looking forward to this,” “This plan is full of dreams,” “The kids will be overjoyed”). The reaction on announcing the postponement was generally positive, lauding Domino’s Pizza’s efforts while expressing regret that the plan was postponed. <Tier 2: Target Audience Outcomes> The number of tweets generated was 34,472 (organic tweets: 9,716; retweets: 24,756), including a couple of organic response from celebrities, with many retweets of news articles by media outlets, which led to increased awareness and understanding of the project. The average number of followers for Japan’s Twitter users is 300, and, based on this number, we can calculate that 300×34,472?more than 1 million people were reached through tweets. Moreover, 97% of the posts were positive and contributed greatly to strengthen engagement. (Source: Own analysis using social listening tool ForSight) <Tier 3: Business Outcomes> On December 24, Domino’s Pizza Japan achieved its highest sales ever in its 30-year history in Japan with 162% up vs 2015.

The Situation

Our idea was to have reindeers deliver Domino’s pizzas during the Christmas holiday season in Japan. However, instead of treating this as classic entertaining stunt from the very beginning, we used the Domino’s official PR machine to announce the initiative to showcase Domino’s was serious. This resulted to attract a massive interest for the brand from both the public and the media.

The Strategy

Our strategy was to equate ordering a pizza to inviting people over for a party. To do so, we first thought about what would make people want to have a home party and came-up with the idea that, if a real reindeer was to deliver the pizza, this would make any party special and worthwhile. To realize this on a limited budget, we needed to generate excitement and anticipation through traditional news outlets which are still highly viewed amongst Japanese as a preferred channel for entertainment and news. Japanese morning news shows are topical, light hearted and entertainment focused. Seasonality combined with novelty are a perfect mix for free air time and talk-ability amongst Japanese.