Thinking outside the box with Domino’s

Heather Stern: When Domino’s opened its first store in 1960, it essentially invented the idea of food delivery—the on-demand concept that's now prevalent in almost every industry. Nearly 20,000 international locations later, Domino's has transformed itself from a pizza place to a tech titan. From the revolutionary online tracker to the ability to order pizza through your voice assistant, your smart TV, or even a tweet, the brand is laser-focused on serving up food faster, safer, with less friction, and in a more magical way than anyone else. 

To give us a glimpse inside this tech company with a pizza obsession is Kate Turnbull, Senior Vice President of Brand and Product Innovation for Domino’s. Although Kate has been with the brand for over a decade, she continues taking risks, thinking outside the box, and inventing new ways to surprise and delight customers. With that, welcome Kate. 

Kate Trumbull: Thank you, Heather. It's great to be with you. 

Heather: Now, I know we were talking earlier…you have three children. Do they think you make pizzas for a living, or do they really know all the amazing things you're doing for the brand? 

Kate: Oh, they definitely believe I make pizzas. And they think that’s the coolest job in the world. They tell everyone when there's pizza at school lunch, ‘My mom made this pizza.’

Heather: And any pizza that’s there, you've made? 

Kate: I made all the pizza.

Heather: I love that. Similarly, I think I mentioned that I have two boys, and they thought the fact that I was talking to Domino’s was like the most amazing thing. They're obsessed. So, pizza is one of the most universally loved and accessible foods. What is it about Domino’s that people are obsessed with and love, and how does that tie into the brand's purpose? 

Kate: Maybe it's a controversial way to start this interview, but I've got to say: Pizza is the best product in the world by far. There's no comparison. And I think it's for many reasons, right? It's incredibly nostalgic, it's emotional, it's tied to so many key milestones in a person's life. It brings people together. It's the first meal in a new home. It's a reason to have a party. It's for when you lose the big game or you win the big game.

What's always there? It’s pizza. It's shareable. It's a brainstorming food. It's there for you late at night if you're at work or if you're out late night with your friends having a blast. Literally, pizza transcends class status and culture, its currency. It magically appears at your door. And even when I think about myself,  with my first child, I was in labor for 30 hours. Long, long time. I will never forget, we ordered Domino’s for the doctors and nurses. I was having my big delivery, and I wanted to make sure they had support. So, I associate those moments and memories with pizza!

We believe strongly that pizza can make every moment better. And we're committed to delivering high-quality, high-value pizza to all people for all moments. When we think about who we are, we talk a lot internally about pizza sauce running through our veins. If you think about 350,000 people across the world working for Domino’s, it's this obsession. It's this passion. And we are out to prove that we're the most passionate people about pizza on the planet. 

A big part of our ethos and our value system is: Actions speak louder than words. So, it's a constant discussion, no matter if you're in marketing or you're in innovation or you're in finance, wherever you are in our company, we're taking action to prove what we believe—and making sure that we're showing up as a company that does things that you wouldn't expect from a pizza company that are incredibly surprising and unexpected.  

Heather: Give me some of the examples. 

Kate: It kind of starts with the national ad campaign we had when we admitted that our pizza sucks. And then we introduced a completely new recipe. We also created a fleet of delivery cars that were purpose-built. They literally were built to deliver pizzas. That was what every detail of those cars was about—with the warming oven, for example. We made it possible for you to order pizza just by tweeting an emoji of pizza. And the first to do e-commerce on Twitter, on social media.

We paved potholes so you can get your pizza home safely. We tipped our carryout customers for being their own delivery drivers. And, most recently, we’re making it possible for you to order pizza with your mind, just like 11 from Stranger Things. It's really fun to be part of a company that wants to keep proving our passion in unexpected ways.

Heather: Those are all great examples. And when you speak about something that, in a way and as much as I love it, is something functional, it really does have a ton of emotion around it. And the way you talk about it is evidence of that.  

Tell me about your role, because you've had a lot of different senior leadership positions at the company. And now, it's this combination of brand and innovation—which is core to what we believe at Lippincott in terms of those being not two disparate areas but two sides of the same coin. So, talk about your role, what you're focused on right now, and how you see the synergies between brand and innovation. 

Kate: That’s a great question. In my current role, I have advertising, product, innovation, media, strategic sales. I think about innovation as part of everything we do. You have to be constantly problem solving and looking way into the future of what, strategically, your business needs to be doing. And that's just the mindset here. I personally think, whether it's marketing or brand or innovation, the company is better when everyone realizes that they can bring new thinking and new ideas to the table and that it's a safe space to do that. I do think this idea of test and learn and take risks and fail fast (everyone talks about that) only exists if you're constantly doing it and people see examples of it. 

We're so data-driven. We're so interested in testing, whether it's A/B testing or testing small-scale technologies and innovations in our stores. I just think COVID has accelerated the pace of change. Even when advertising used to be like an eight-month window to go from idea to on-air, we learned that you can do things so much faster—and that you have to— because supply chain and operations were up against the wall with so many constraints. We had to be ready for anything.

Heather: In a way, we’re talking about the pandemic as if it's a thing of the past, but it's kind of still here—though I feel like we're in a new phase. It was a really challenging time for many. How did the brand evolve during this time? You began to speak a little bit about more experimentation, condensed timelines. What else do you think, looking back at the last two years, that you learned as a leader and how the brand evolved?  

Kate: Looking back on the business, as the pandemic began in early 2020, our delivery sales skyrocketed. People did not want to leave their house; they felt unsafe. It was exciting to see sales like that, but it was a ton of stress and pressure on operations and on the supply chain. And it was crazy, because we were promoting things that I never in a million years would've thought we would ever be talking about as RTBs, like the temperatures of our ovens and the fact that we do this kind of sanitation. I mean, the things we were filming were just kind of bizarre; but we were trying to be relevant in that moment of fear and safety concerns. In everything we did, we had to launch contactless delivery and make sure that the pizzas at your door…we created a pizza pedestal, because we believe your pizza should be on a pedestal, not just put down on the ground. 

So, there were always moments of trying to innovate even in those high-crisis times. Basically overnight, we created Domino's car-side delivery, where we literally deliver the pizza to your car and you can say, in the digital experience, whether you want it in your trunk or you want it through the passenger door. We were really trying to meet the needs of the time. It was exciting. It was high-stress. 

But I remember very vividly that I got on a call with the agency, and we co-wrote a brief together and decided: OK, here are all the emotions and tensions that consumers are feeling, and who do we want to be in this moment for our consumers? And we really came down to a very simple truth that we just wanted to help. So, then you're looking at how does pizza help. And at that moment, right in the beginning of the pandemic, a lot of people lost jobs, all the restaurants closed. So, we immediately filmed—literally, on iPads in stores—our franchisees talking from the heart about the fact that we're hiring and we're there for them. Production wise, it was terrible—but so authentic and genuine. And the message was just the right message at the right moment. So, you learn a ton of things, but it's about really staying close to where the consumer and the culture is and figuring out what about us can help. How can we come through? If there are tensions and problems, resolve them through pizza.

Heather: Wow, that's amazing. Just to even think about the moment of co-creating this brief. As you said, you've done some amazing campaigns and there was something quite simple about this one, but that it was really meaningful for customers and for the brand. 

You were talking about all of your employees and everybody playing a role in contributing to ideas, in taking the ethos of the brand forward. How do you actually do that? We often will say that brand doesn't sit in a corner or in a department. It really should flow through everything. Are there any ways that you make sure that that happens? How do you get all those voices and everybody kind of moving in the same direction? 

Kate: As we've grown tremendously as a company, it does get harder and harder. I think we try to keep our structure pretty flat, and there’s a ton of ways that we overlap with different departments if everyone is clear on the goals. Again, we run two different businesses. We run a delivery business, and we run a carry-out business—completely different consumer set and different consumer needs and barriers. And so, we make sure different parts of the company are also structured kind of like we are on brand from a carry out and on a delivery side. Then, their roadmaps and pipelines of what they're doing can really connect with the stories that we eventually want to tell. So, there will be innovations that are back-of-house or operational or for store team members that just won't resonate with consumers. But we're very closely connected with those teams, and we have a process around brainstorming, around concepting, around kind of testing our ideas to ensure that everyone has a seat at the table—and that the best idea wins. 

The cross-functional teams really understand the consumer research and understand the consumer, and we are doing a good job sharing that and also ensuring that we're constantly doing the research and staying close to that consumer. There are better odds that you're going to get more ideas that will eventually turn into things that could be consumer-facing national windows.

Heather: Essentially, you're a tech company with a pizza obsession, and there's been a lot that has been written and studied, as it relates to the technology innovations and the role that digital is playing in furthering your brand mission. Tell me more about that idea. 

Kate: It's hard to believe, but the Domino's Pizza Tracker launched 20 years ago. And it was revolutionary at the time. No one had done it. When I joined the brand, in every focus group that I was in, consumers were talking about the pizza tracker in funny ways. They're like, that's how I know when to put my pants on! So, it's just such a part of who we are. It was kind of the start of the revolution for technology. 

Another kind of secret sauce that we had that at the time—20, 15 years ago, and I don't think was true of other companies—is that the top people in IT and the top people in marketing were a team. There was incredible trust. There was no blaming, and it just allowed us the opportunity to take risks. So, Tracker was a success. It gave us a little confidence that we could do a little bit more, a little bit more. But I think the biggest drivers of that mentality, and the fact that we're known that way, started with benchmarking outside of our category. 

Most companies look at their competitive set. So for us, at the time we were number two, you'd say: Okay, Pizza Hut, what are they doing in tech? What's Papa John's doing? Little Caesar's? Maybe some regional players? We kind of threw that playbook out and said, No, no, no. We want to behave like a technology company versus a pizza company. So Let's look outside to see what others are doing. What's Amazon doing? What's Google doing at the time? What's Facebook doing? Learning from that and ideating there, it goes all the way back to having a pizza profile and starting to have data on consumers. Then, we built the easy ordering platform.

Easy Order allowed us to save data—your credit card, your favorite order—that makes it really easy for us to eventually get to our anywhere platforms and build our loyalty program and all the other pieces that were really critical. But, as I reflect, it's like small wins, a different mindset. 

Internally within in the company, when we started saying we wanted to be a technology or e-commerce company, there were fights. A bold, big vision is not something that everyone just accepts easily. There were people who were more closely tied to pizza and product saying ‘no, no, no, no, no, no.  We're a product company, we're a pizza company.’ Of course, we're a pizza company. But there was so much to unlock by being ahead of the curve with technology.

At the time, about 20% of our sales were digital. We decided, okay, to be an e-commerce company, you need to get to 50% of your sales. Because, when half your sales are digital, you're an e-commerce company. Obviously. So, when the teams that were part of this bought into that, the ideas started flowing—everything from tweeting your pizza with an emoji to having a 50%-off boost week—all of the different ways that you can take action to help us hit that goal and then know, along the way, that you're getting closer and closer and closer. I feel like a lot of brands are reactionary. They're like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is happening. What do we do?’ We were able to put out a far-out goal and patiently and relentlessly chase it. We just got more sophisticated, year after year, learning and creating new innovation and all of the A/B testing that we do. 

Heather: I love that idea of redefining your competitive set and not just looking at your category but really beyond the category, which allows you to transform. How are you doing against that goal? Where are you now? 

Kate: Oh, we're, we're way past that goal. 

Heather: Yeah. I assumed.

Kate: It’s incredible: 80% of our sales are digital. Our digital experiences are our storefront, and I think it's very top of mind. We had that internal rallying-cry goal, and it seemed so crazy. Well, eventually the media started saying it; and I think we've certainly proven that that's who we are. I laugh when I remember that we launched our TV ads around our Dom voice ordering at exactly the same—literally the same time—that Apple and Google had their ads on about it. So, it's pretty amazing that a pizza company would be in that same conversation and on track. 

I think technology continues to be incredibly important. It's evolving and changing in how it can make an impact. We think a lot about how to keep growing ourselves and pushing ourselves as a logistics company. Actually, we have a different competitor set than ever before with the third-party aggregators that have disrupted even more quickly through COVID. So, how do we kind of marry technology and back-of-house operations to keep unlocking bold innovation that has a positive step/change experience for our team members but also for our consumers. 

Heather: It's exciting to hear of so many of these things that have come to fruition and, as you said, surpassed your goals; but it's daunting, right? Because now the bar keeps rising to be able to keep up with what is happening in technology. What are consumers doing, thinking? What do they want? How do you and your team continue to stay ahead, continue to be proactive versus reactive? 

Kate: You don't do it alone. We have great partners and agencies and tech companies that we're so close to, and we're always sharing best practices. We're looking at trends and trend mapping. We're investigating technologies and looking outside of ourselves. We're looking globally at our Domino's master franchisees and some of the really big markets and the really interesting things that they're doing and how we can drive scale together. To me, there's always the next frontier, right?

There are places that we don't play in, as our bread and butter is carry out and delivery and weekend dinnertime rush. That's when we drive so many of our orders. So, there's so much opportunity, Heather. And because consumers have changed so much over the last couple of years, and different competitors have evolved a ton, I actually think that level of competition is a good thing to keep pushing us to take risks and to invest where we need to invest.

Heather: On test and learn and continually taking risks, there are clearly things that never end up making it to market or go out into the world; they're not quite right. Can you give me an example of something that you guys tried that didn't work—and how you used that as a stepping stone to the next thing?

Kate: Not everything works. In a perfect world, you're doing the testing ahead of time to mitigate your risk. Historically, a lot of things were tried at Domino's—whether it's what I like to fondly refer to now as spin innovation, lots of LTOs [limited time offers] and this or that crazy thing, things that would give us news but that weren't purpose-driven or really thought out or data-driven. That was years ago; but you’ve got to keep having those conversations, because it's very tempting to go down that path when you need news. At the same time—especially as someone who's been here 11 years, and we've just gone through this huge global shift—I would say that I'm a big proponent of challenging sacred cows. We all learn all the things that are true and not true. You can't do this. This is not how we work, but then that starts to be really restrictive. New people come into the company and say, Well, what about this? Nope. That's not what we do here. We actually had this amazing session with our marketing and innovation teams, where we literally just started throwing out all of the truths and sacred cows that existed here. My gosh, we realized that there were so many, and it was important to really reinvestigate them and be willing to admit that they might not be right and maybe we need to test them again. The world has changed. Like I keep saying, consumers have changed, our competitive set has changed. And what might work now maybe didn't work before. I think that's a really healthy part of innovation too—challenging all of your own assumptions and truths within your organization. 

Heather: It takes courage, because those are the things that we kind of rest on and look to as the beacons; but those things can change over time. As you look forward, you are in such a position of strength and admired for all the things that you're doing, so what's next? What are you working on that you can share or, at least from a thematic standpoint, that you're excited about? 

Kate: Well, I'm excited about a lot of things for next year. We've gone through two years of having to pivot and react, and the supply chain can't do this or that, or this other priority has to happen because of all the high costs. I feel so confident that we've finally kind of settled into this place where we've had time to plan out ideas and chapters and technology that I think continues to prove that we are the champions of delivery on the delivery side. Then, on the carry-out side, we're faster than you think. We are really fast at carry out, and bringing innovation and creativity to help that come to life for consumers is going to be important. There's also product news in the future that I think is going to be incredibly well received—and its ties to nostalgia that’s just the best parts of pizza. 

Heather: That's great. I'll be waiting to see some of these things come to fruition. You've referenced that the world has changed, it's continuing to change, and it’s being driven by what the customer wants and needs. How do we meet him or her where they're at? What does that ‘always on’ kind of marketing look like?  

Kate: I have to be transparent here. It is a balance. Because we're so big and we have two different businesses and so many pieces and parts, we really do have to plan—ideally, with six-to-nine months of planning—especially if there's big technology pieces to it. So that's happening; however, we feel very free to keep our pulse on what's happening in culture and to be timely about our thinking. There are different ways we look at it. Cultural tensions are huge; and I think just being on social media, being a human in this crazy time, it's not hard. You don't need to go outside yourself to write down what people are feeling. 

What are some of the dynamics for the brand, the category, the consumer? Whether it's an insight, a truth, a tension…if we take what's best about Domino’s and are able to resolve one of those, it gets the press to take attention and gets consumers to really listen and breakthrough all the clutter. Some of the ones that I think about are like Paving for Pizza. People still talk to me about that. For us, it was never a political thing. It was just because of our passion and love for pizza, how far we'd go to make sure you can get your pizza safely home.

But, you know, what was happening for consumers in the back of their mind is just frustration that government and politicians don't do the things they should be doing—so a pizza company had to step in. Right now, we've been running the inflation relief deal. That's really another moment where we could take an offer that we've never done nationally and try to help make a difference. Costs are up for the food basket and for labor, so everyone's raising prices because they have to. Our franchisees have to take price in different places. We took price in our national offer earlier in the year. It's not that we haven't been having to do that, but we looked for something that we can do to say ‘we see you’ and to try to help. At the end of the day, when we're really on our game, it's taking a common trope or misconception and doing the absolute opposite.

Going back to the pizza turnaround when government was doing shady things—and us just being honest and real at that time when none of that was happening—I think just set a foundation for us to keep taking action like that. Even the surprise fees, which took place last year, with aggregators charging all these. We opted to give away $50 million in free product. So, we’re just trying to find ways that we can come at things differently than is sort of expected or the way others are doing it.

Heather:  Back to your point around actions speaking louder than words and the kind of ethos of the brand and what you want to bring out there…actually taking these steps that are not just great communication campaigns but are really tangible, I think many people are probably surprised to hear of some of these amazing things that you're doing. I want to pivot a little bit to partnerships, though, because you've had some incredible partnerships, from Stranger Things to Google. How do you approach these collaborations and partnerships? What have you learned from some of the more successful ones? And do you have an ideal collaborator that you'd love to get on board?  

Kate: I love that question. Hopefully, someone's listening and we can make it happen. So, we don't do a ton of partnerships. We're really very discerning in this space and can be difficult to work with in the sense that we're just so passionate and clear about not wanting to do spin innovation; we don't want to do gimmicks; we want to do something that is really authentic. It's about reaching audiences where they are and is defined more by psychographics than demographics.

I think with the Stranger Things partnership, there were so many elements to it. That team and myself and my team, we talked for months and months and months about who we were and what the key authentic DNA of Stranger Things is and what the key authentic DNA of Domino’s is. And our whole push was how do we do something that neither of us could do alone?

That's the bar. How do we do something that's so unusual, unexpected, and not what everyone's done before? It was hard, because they came to this moment for this season with a very clear picture of what we do. We were, like, we actually want to go this way. But it was cool, because we spent the time really building trust in what was important to each side. Then we went through a lot of ebbs and flows and challenges. We could handle all of it, because we were in it. If we were in it, no matter what, it was positive in the sense that we need to start finding even more ways to reach Gen Z. They're not watching TV, and it's harder to reach them when everything’s so fragmented digitally. I remember one thing we couldn't get into the contract; but I always felt like, gosh, if we make something authentic enough, Netflix and Stranger Things will post it on their channel just because they believe in it. They're so protective and so thoughtful about every single thing, that that was a pretty lofty goal. So, we knew it had worked when they decided to post it and their fanatics were saying, ‘Oh my gosh, is this a deleted scene?’ They thought it was literally part of the season.

So that got people talking, and it didn't feel like an ad at all. We didn't want it to be an ad. Even the mention in one of their episodes that was kind of dogging on Domino’s just felt authentic. So, it inspired a lot of bespoke ways of doing a partnership. We even had our throwback retro boxes, with all these Easter eggs from the show and a QR code to download the mind-ordering app— like 200 million boxes in the world. That got a ton of conversation.  

So, we love partnerships. They're really hard. You have to really trust and have that relationship and really understand what each side sees as success. Then, you know, you work creatively together to make it a win for both sides. We are working on one for next year that I think will be breakthrough and will be pretty broadly appealing. 

You asked me about a dream partnership, and I'll keep it pretty broad. We really want to take a leapfrog and get very, very involved in the gaming space. But again, we don't want to do it the way that a lot of other brands have done it. So, if anyone's listening and wants to partner, give me a call. 

Heather: I love it. I love it. Pivoting a little bit. You have this history at the brand and have seen it evolve so much, but I believe you started at Procter and Gamble. In a way, that is a great learning ground for just thinking about a deep understanding of the customer and how to be purpose-led. What did you take from that experience, and do you draw on that at all in what you're doing today? 

Kate: I feel so fortunate that I started my marketing career at Procter and Gamble. I take so much away from that. I mean, consumer is boss, period, period, period. And the rigor and passion for research and for product innovation and for being the best is second to none. It's one of those cultures where you're constantly going to brown-bag lunches and to sessions to train and develop and to learn more about, you know, when you have over a hundred brands that this brand can do a thing on purpose-led brand building and this brand can talk about being scrappy and entrepreneurial. They do such a great job with training and developing marketing talent and keeping them really engaged and hungry.  

Some of the simple things you learn at P&G is that you've got to keep the benefit simple on both the brief and in the communication. Every time we try to overcomplicate something, we learn that it doesn't work— like the fundamentals of brand building, the what and the how and the size of the prize…I could go on and on and. There are things that absolutely stay with you. There are things that I've brought here and use to train my team. Again, you have to give credit where credit's due. I mean, they'd have three-day courses on marketing communications and how to write communications, emails, the one-pagers that they do. That kind of investment and development really matters; and workers in the workforce today, especially Gen Z and young Millennials, want to feel invested in that.

Heather: One of the topics that I've been including on almost every episode is about the continually changing role of marketing and what a marketer is expected to do, which really runs the gamut, and also the war for talent, so to speak, and how to continually attract and retain amazing talent. Is there something that you are always looking for when you're hiring, or a question that you ask that's always insightful in terms of really getting deeply into who a person is? 

Kate: That's a great question. I remember when I used to be interviewed, my question that I always asked was to describe the culture in one word. It was always fascinating to see when you’re really forced to pick one word to describe a culture. 

The thing I want in interviews, personally, is for it to be a, a conversation. I don't want it to feel so formal. So, I ask a question and then ask them to ask me a question, Then we go back and forth. If they're really passionate and curious about the brand and about marketing, it's very easy for them to keep coming back with questions, just like the conversation we're having today.  

Heather: If asked, how would you describe the culture at Domino's in one word? 

Kate: Oh my gosh, you turned it on me! The one word that comes to mind, actually, is ‘family.’ It really feels like we're all on one brand. We're all one team. We're so connected to our stores. If you don't make it, bake it, or take it, you support those who do. That's a thing we say. Not everyone fits here. It's a special place. I loved P&G; but, my gosh, I've never met so many Type A people. It was not such a warm, collaborative family atmosphere. And I think, if you're going to spend all your time—a lot of your time—here, when you're not with your family, you want to really love the people.

Heather: Yeah. And I think a lot of that does come from the top down, so kudos to you for being able to build and sustain that kind of culture. 

I do want to end with a question that I ask all of my guests—and I always learn something new when I ask it: Who is your icon?  

Kate: Heather, that is a hard question. There are many people that I think are iconic and that I am inspired by, but I don't know them. It's interesting at this moment in my life that you're catching me. My icon is working parents—working parents and single parents. I think the ability to give your all to your job and have your partner give their all to their job—and then really try to make sure that you're raising your kids with great values and that they're feeling loved and supported and connected to you—doing all of that all of the time is hard. It's crazy. It's all-encompassing. 

I guess that I would say my mom, Michelle—my kids call her Nona, Italian for grandmother—is an icon to me. She was a working mom, and she created this example. I always felt like I was loved, I was special. She always told me I could do anything I wanted to do, and I really believed her. She gave me the confidence that you can do both and do it really, really well. 

If I look at it with a Domino's lens, though, it's our general managers of our stores. I mean, these are the people in the pandemic who, when no one wanted to leave their house, they were frontline. They were making the pizzas, taking the risk. They love their teams. They develop their teams. I know many of them, and they really are the face of the brand every day. And they're the future franchisees that have a chance to live the American dream and, eventually, become a very successful business owner. I know I was supposed to do one, but I couldn't help it. 

Heather: Well, they’re both great examples, and I echo everything that you said about working parents. I hope I'm setting the right example for my kids. And, as you say, work can be all-encompassing; but you are also wanting to create that loving and attentive environment at home too. And it's hard, because you're pulled in so many directions.  

So, again, hats off to you and everything that you're doing, and all of the roles that you play, and all the hats that you wear. I just loved talking to you about everything that you're passionate about and all of these things that feel obvious but really aren't—like this idea of challenging the sacred cows and nurturing your teams. I just want to thank you so much for spending time with us this morning. I don't know if it's quite pizza time yet, but I think you would say anytime is pizza time. 

Kate: Any time is pizza time. That's exactly right. Thank you so much, Heather. I really enjoyed this.