A few days ago, I did a poll in my Daily Email House community, asking members what comes to mind when I say, “Most overused marketing case study of all time.”
I had one overused case study in mind, but I wanted to see what others would say. Some of what came up:
Claude Hopkins’s campaign for Schlitz beer…
David Ogilvy’s powerful promotion of the impressively loud Rolls-Royce electric clock…
The Wall Street Journal’s “Two young men” sales letter.
Finally, architect and copywriter Neil Sutton got the one I was thinking of:
“First one that came to my mind was the Domino’s Pizza as the ultimate example of a USP.”
Yes! That in my mind is the most overused marketing case study. It’s famous and has been told and retold, generation after generation, in books, courses, and from the stage:
“Fresh hot pizza in 30 minutes, or it’s free! Nobody said nothing about ‘good’ or ‘good for you’! Haha! Such a great USP!”
So why doesn’t Domino’s use this USP any more?
On May 25, 1990, Susan Wauchop, aged 41, was driving on a local road near Granger, Indiana. She got hit head on by a speeding Domino’s van that was coming from the other direction and had lost control. Wauchop died a few hours later. Her family was awarded $2.8 million in damages.
That didn’t stop Domino’s incentivizing their delivery drivers to speed. But a much larger settlement did. In 1993, a woman who suffered serious head and spine injuries after being hit by a Domino’s driver who sped through a red light was awarded $79 million in damages.
A few days after that settlement, Domino’s CEO Tom Moynihan announced the 30-minute guarantee was abolished, in the interest of public safety and corporate profits.
Today, I wanna tell you about an innovation that Domino’s introduced in the coming years, because it relates to that famous USP, and it relates to what you are doing. Yes, you. Right now.
Whatever business you are in, however advanced or new you are to it, what I’m about to tell you is relevant to you, and is certainly the most valuable thing anybody has told you today… possibly this month (it’s only the 3rd…) or maybe even this whole year (it’s a stretch, but maybe).
Ready?
In the mid 2000s, Domino’s conducted a study of the emotions involved in ordering and waiting for a pizza. From a contemporary article:
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The “high” at the point of ordering was followed by a trough of anxiety. “People have told us that anxiety sets in. They don’t know if we’ve got their order, if we’ll get it right, if it will arrive on time,” said spokesman Tim McIntyre.
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Domino’s described the customer experience of ordering a simple pepperoni pizza as an “emotional rollercoaster.”
It makes sense when you think about it.
You (and yours) are hungry… you have to decide (or agree!) what you would want to eat… you finally do decide… you take action and order… you throw up your arms to signal victory, and then… nothing. You have to wait, and can’t do anything about it. Not only that, but you have complete uncertainty about when, if, by whom, or to what extent you will ever be satisfied.
So maybe the famed Domino’s 30-minute guarantee wasn’t really about speed. Maybe it was just about certainty, or rather, about eliminating uncertainty.
Domino’s took this insight and asked themselves, “How can we use this to make money, without killing or maiming people in the process?”
The answer was the Domino’s Pizza Tracker®. Order a pizza, then go to a webpage that that tracks your specific pizza and how it’s progressing:
Order received => pepperoni distributed => oven being preheated, we should have done this earlier => pizza put on that big flat wooden shovel => pizza burned a little, but ok => cardboard box => out the door
Result?
Well, It worked. Big time.
When the Domino’s Pizza Tracker came out, people love-love-loved it.
Moms, who had been dealing with screaming and nagging children, loved it in particular. “I used to want to throttle my little boy,” one mother said (I’m dramatizing a bit). “Now I just sit him in front of the computer screen to watch the Domino’s Pizza Tracker®. He is hypnotized and more importantly quiet until the pizza arrives. This is the best thing ever!”
The Domino’s Pizza Tracker upped sales, particularly online sales. It led to higher average order values. It led to more loyal customers. Twenty years on, the tracker is still in existence, and billions of people used it to track billions of pizzas.
Point being, uncertainty is a really horrible feeling for your customers to experience. As a result, uncertainty is really horrible for you too — it kills sales, cause refunds, sinks brands.
And vice versa. Eliminating uncertainty is good for business.
The Domino’s Pizza Tracker gives you one simple idea, something you can apply in your own business in some way today, to reduce uncertainty.
Of course, there are different kinds of uncertainty, and different ways to deal with that uncertainty.
Travis Sago, the guy I keep hyping up because I think he is the second coming of Claude Hopkins, talks about 5 kinds of uncertainty or risk you want to reduce for people under the acronym TIMER.
You can’t always eliminate all five. But the more you can eliminate, the richer you get, and the easier the process becomes.
I normally promote Travis’s very expensive Royalty Ronin community, of which I am a member.
Today, no. I want to minimize your uncertainty of joining a new, overwhelming, expensive community, and trying to integrate yourself there.
Instead, I will just point you to Travis’s book, Make ‘Em Beg To Buy From You, which you can get on Amazon.
Fair warning: This is not a particularly elegant or well-written book.
In fact, I don’t think it’s really written at all. Most of it is bits of wisdom that seem to be transcribed from Travis’s live trainings.
But the ideas in this book are gold, if you only take a bit of time to go through it and to really hear what Travis is saying, such as the five kinds of uncertainty, the TIMER risks, which you can find in Chapter 3.
For more information: