Casper Mooyman – Domino’s Pizza

Casper Mooyman is the Head of Marketing at Domino’s Pizza Netherlands. He is responsible for Domino’s brand and revenue objectives for the Dutch market. The marketing team consists of 25 marketing specialists focusing on brand, campaigns, media deployment, online, analyses, product development and local marketing. Casper: “As marketing team, we are mostly a commercial driver of the business.”

Main KPI’s for growth

Casper: “We mostly look at brand awareness, consideration, repeat purchase and loyalty. We evaluate these metrics on a quarterly basis. Our most important objective is to work on consideration. We are in a position where our brand awareness is quite high, but the conversion to consideration is an area where we still have room to grow. Something that sets us apart from other brands in the market is the fact that we always try to correlate the strength of our brand and our brand KPIs to revenue and commercial objectives. A lot of brands launch more brand related campaigns. We try to combine our message with our commercial goals. The market we find ourselves in is mostly driven by impulse. The visibility of our brand fuels those impulses. Whereas TV and radio have a more long-term brand building role for some companies, we consider it to be more of a performance channel. We see a direct correlation between TV and purchases.”

When it comes to Domino’s most important ingredients for growth, Casper tells us that their stores play an important role. “We need stores to sell our product. Currently, we have around 300 stores in the Netherlands. Based on our analyses, we can expand to 500. Firstly, we can expand in the areas where we are already present. Opening an additional store in an area where we are already active ensures more efficiency (fast and safe delivery) and a shorter distance from each customer to the store. At the same time, there are a lot of places where Domino’s is not yet active. There are many small cities and villages where we can still introduce ourselves. So, there is certainly room for growth. When we compare ourselves with other countries, we notice that purchase frequency is relatively low in The Netherlands. Offering the option of something other than dinner, for instance, lunch or snacking, is a big opportunity. There are multiple moments of the day we can still grow our share. And lastly, we look towards our menu. 2, 3 years ago we added hot sandwiches, not only catering towards lunch but also opening the door to a different consumer who might not opt for pizza.”

Role of creative

“When people think of pizza, 9 times out of 10 Domino’s will be one of the first brands to come up”, Casper continues. “It’s about bringing across what the brand stands for and providing reasons to consumers to consider purchase. To be able to do so, you need good creatives. In our case it is about showing our fresh ingredients, the dough is hand-made, and we can deliver within 21 minutes. That’s something you need to share through creatives. As such, creative development is extremely important.”

When it comes to their creative process, Casper explains that Domino’s has a brand- and design team inhouse for developing various campaign creatives. “Apart from radio and TV, It could be anything from in-store material, online, out of home, banners. We all develop it inhouse with a team of 5, 6 people. They bring lots of good ideas to the table. A key advantage of doing this internally is that the team fully knows how the business works, understands our culture and what our brand stands for. We also gather inspiration from other countries Domino’s is present, but we always make sure to adjust it to the local market. When we have an idea we want to move forward with, we sometimes seek the help of an advertising agency, which might just come down to production. Other times we develop the idea inhouse with the help of freelancers who challenge us to do better and develop the big idea further. This way of working has been going really well for us.

To measure the success of their creatives, Domino’s looks at their brand tracker. Casper: “We determine whether our messages come across to the target group. However, the most important thing is how they perform in terms of revenue. For a large majority of our media deployment we can determine whether they drive revenue. In the case where a creative is not capable of contributing to that growth, it will most likely be a bad creative in our book. However, it does differ per campaign. What we do on Tik Tok is fairly new, and is not something we evaluate based on revenue. It is more about reach and audience KPIs because you are reaching a completely different target group.”

Creative challenges

Casper tells us that one of the biggest challenges when it comes to creatives has been around for a long time. “It will always be a challenge to translate an insight you have gathered from research or analyses – whether you want to develop a campaign or introduce a product – to a creative idea. Nowadays, there are two things important to mention. The first one is insourcing versus outsourcing. We don’t work with one set advertising agency. We know the market we are in and which role we can play, and have a feeling if something will catch on or not. It is almost impossible to find agencies that have that same exact dynamic and knowledge of the market. We have always noticed that our own developed ideas, with the help of for instance freelancers, work really well. The things you do inhouse or outsource is something that is really changing. I am not saying that doing everything yourself is necessarily better – there are lots of examples where brands work with lead agencies and develop very successful creatives. But within our market, dynamic and company culture, we have not been able to find that yet.”

“The other challenge lies with the fragmented media landscape”, Casper says. “All those media channels have their own dynamic, which makes it difficult to translate that one big creative idea across all of them. Something that goes hand in hand lies with the development of campaigns. TV has a much longer production time than online creatives. So, unfortunately, they are often the starting point. For our TV commercials, we use a production company, and a lot of the time you need to for instance do the photography much earlier on. But it doesn’t mean that those images can’t be used for other channels as well. It’s not true that a print creative or TV commercial have no use online. However, when you want to ensure maximum efficiency, you need to tailor it to that specific platform. Which is why we decided to organise it inhouse and hire a video specialist. It gives us more flexibility and speed to create more online video. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be ‘TV-quality’. A photo of a pizza that has been shot with an iPhone can sometimes easily outperform the high-quality tv commercial. It simply fits the context and umfeld where the creative is placed a lot better.”

Moving with the times

Casper tells us that creatives must go with the current times. “You try to develop something that will be appreciated at that point in time. For certain campaigns and situations, we adjust the message. When we want to share something about lunch, we need to make sure that the style and format fit that message. But at the same time, we know the core of how a creative can be successful for us. We need to visualise our products in a tasteful way, the most important objective being that people get hungry. By showing our ingredients, way of preparation and the end result. The price point needs to ensure people open the app and order a pizza. Those elements will always be relevant, regardless of time.”