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What do you do when your product is a massive fail, and consumers openly say it is horrid? If you are Domino’s Pizza, you boldly embrace the criticism. And, you create a microsite (PizzaTurnaround.com) as a platform to document the change.
On the cusp of its 50th birthday, Domino’s Pizza has put out a new campaign owning up to a product that many people really didn’t like. (In a survey, Domino’s Pizza tied for last place for taste …with Chuck E Cheese. Ouch!) The new “Pizza Turnaround” video was created by powerhouse agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky.
In the four-minute video focus group members said repeatedly that the crust is like cardboard. Other pizza flavour insights include “totally void of flovour” and “the worst excuse for pizza I’ve ever had”.
As comedian Stephen Colbert pointed out while lampooning the ads, “It takes alpha meat balls to stand up and say ‘America we suck’.”
Exactly. You have to give Domino’s kudos for their humility and transparent approach. The company is taking wonderful, brutally honest step forward, trying to reclaim its image.
But back to the microsite. How does it fare as a content channel?
It’s got the usual social network links to Facebook and Twitter (which are both great examples of social media use and interaction). However, the microsite lacks an RSS feed and a link to their YouTube channel. And, while they have a small members-only Flickr group for employees, there is no group for us, the hoi polloi.
You have to give Domino’s high credit for bringing in a feed from Twitter, and not filtering the results. Many of the comments weren’t exactly shining examples of brand love when I was there. But, bravo for showing the comments – warts and all. It boosts credibility and authenticity.
In addition to driving traffic to the site from Twitter or the Domino's homepage, traffic from natural search queries should never be overlooked. From a search point of view, it would have been nice to see the microsite appear in more niche searches like “Domino’s Pizza taste” or “Domino’s Pizza crust”. (It does currently rank #9 for “new Domino’s Pizza”.) And, I’d love to see the banner text rendered as readable type to search engines rather than a graphic.
So why not extend the campaign as part of the Domino’s Pizza website, much like Blendtec does for the Will It Blend campaign? I’m not sure.
I don’t know if the microsite creates any extra value. Users need to click through to the Domino’s pizza site to order, find a nearby location or get a coupon. While comments are allowed, there is little other way to interact or create content on the site. For example, have Domino's customers create a new tagline for the pizza, or upload their own experiences which could be shared.
Will the commitment to a better product continue on with the microsite, or will it have a limited shelf-life and eventually fade away? If there is a long-term commitment to better taste and a better product, why not incorporate it into the main Domino’s Pizza website?
The site is no doubt a work in progress and it will be interesting to watch how it evolves.
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The other day I was having a series of conversations with some friends about Montreal restaurants – the good, the bad and the downright pretentious. As a lark, I googled “pretentious restaurant Montreal” expecting to get blog rants, various foodie forum discussions and the like. (I did.) But, imagine my surprise when Google Local Business listing served up some pretentious restaurants for my viewing pleasure.
I understood the location-based aspect of the Local Business result, but surely, the restaurants weren’t entering “pretentious” in as some of their keywords for the business listing description? I suspected it was tied to the reviews that were being pulled in. But best to try this again just to make sure. How about “worst restaurant in Montreal”? Why, yes, once again Google Local Business pulls through.
How about "worst customer service Toronto”? Bingo!
To confirm my suspicion that these results were triggered by a mix of location (Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal) listing keywords (restaurant) and keywords from consumer reviews I double-checked with some colleagues, Martin and Xurxo at Bloom Search Marketing (the experts in paid search) and Dev Basu, a leader in SEO, SEM and local search marketing. They agreed.
Companies take warning: This is the power of consumer-generated reviews. Right now it’s a high concentration of hotels, restaurants and travel. But as user-generated content continues to grow, it will influence your ranking - not only for the keywords you used, but for other unintended keyword queries. More than ever, companies need to monitor what is being said about them so they can address service issues and correct the problem at the source.
Resources:
Google Business Listing Quality Guidelines
It's hard to believe that the myth of the keyword meta tag still exists, but it does. And now Google has taken a firm stance, stating in no uncertain terms "Google does not use the keywords meta tag in web ranking." So, it's official. Don't bother with the keyword meta tag.
Please don't do this, in real life or online! Keyword stuffing turns people off. Period.
Thanks to @zoonini (The amazing Kathryn of Zoonini Web Services) for the graphic design help! We're on a mission to save good people from bad websites, stay tuned for our upcoming launch of When Bad Websites Happen to Good People.
Yesterday I was having a conversation with a friend who asked if Twitter was good for optimization purposes. My answer was the wonderfully ambiguous, “Well, yes and no.”
We’ll start with the no part.
Twitter, like many other social media sites, adds a “nofollow” attribute to all outbound links. Google, Yahoo and MSN exclude links listed as “nofollow” links from their algorithmic calculations. One of the few search engines that ignores the “nofollow” command is Ask.com, which has a small part of the search engine market share. So, try as you may, linking to your site or your blog will not increase your number of incoming links.
But all is not lost.
In an interview at WebProNews, Joe Whyte said, “I tend to think that link value is still passed but at a much lower value. We also know that these links do get picked up and put into Google's and Yahoo's backlink checker and we know that nofollow still allows spiders to cache and index, which is still great.”
And yesterday, things got even better as Twitter's new VP of Operations, Santosh Jayaram, who incidentally was VP of Search Quality for Google, announced that Twitter will soon be crawling and indexing links.
This means Twitter will go beyond tracking conversations and enter a new phase of real-time search. As well, Twitter Search will get “get a reputation ranking system. That means that not all tweets will be equal; rank will be calculated for each twitterer, probably based on several criteria such as number of followers, number of retweets and so forth.” (From Mashable)
I suspect that just as Google uses domain age, no doubt length of Twitter use will play a part as well.
It’s a very exciting and potentially huge development.
The bottom line is brand recognition and visibility. You can use Twitter to create community and share your latest post. The site visitors can then share and bookmark your post through Sphinn, Buzz Up, StumbleUpon or any other number of tools. Additionally, as you build your community, “RTs” (retweets) help spread and maximize your message, getting it out to more and more audiences. And don’t forget that Twitter has just become an even better resource for keyword research. Use it to better understand your market and what they are looking for.
If you are looking at Twitter from a pure Google PageRank angle, no it is not going to help with optimization… but going beyond and looking at how interactions with your community can help create a more solid relationship with your potential customers and attract people to your website, then Twitter is fantastic for optimizing your site.
- This is one of my favourite quotes this week, “Not all marketing stories are literal; be aware of the story told through your site design choices.” Read this outstanding article by David Rossiter that reflects on storytelling, user-friendly design and the social web.
- Finally, Twitter has brought real-time search to us all!!
- Wolfram|Alpha hasn’t yet launched but that hasn’t stopped it from being called a “Google killer” The search engine uses natural language queries and doesn’t just supply results, but rather answers them directly.
- With Swine Flu being the conversation-de-jour. Lifehacker reported on a Google Map mashup to track the disease.
- All you emotive people out there will be glad to know that Gmail has added more emoticons.
- Are you a B2B marketer? Gord Hotchkiss has authored a white paper titled “Mapping the BuyerSphere” in which he examines different buyer roles, the identified risk control mechanisms, and the relative effect of a vendor's credibility and positioning. You can download it here.
- Mitch Joel offers his insights on speaking in a powerful new way as part of Cluetrain Manifesto's 10th anniversary. Read other posts expanding on Cluetrain’s tenets at Cluetrainplus10.
- Online Marketing Blog has some great tips in Public Relations Activities That Affect SEO. As Lee Odden points out “content that can be searched on can be optimized.”
- The always-inspiring Valeria Maltoni has written 5 Marketing Ideas You Can Use Today.
- Is it any surprise that even online men feel the need for speed? Find out more about gender issues in website usability.
Friday Fun
Twitter Magnets – Don’t say I didn’t warn you – it’s addictive!
Kathryn from Zoonini and I would love to thank everyone who has enjoyed and shared our public service announcement Do I Need a Flash Intro? We got over 50,000 unique visitors in 4 days from over 130 countries. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!
Zoonini Web Services and I put together a public service announcement to answer the age-old question “Do I need a Flash intro?”
Don’t get us wrong – we love Flash, when it’s used correctly to inspire, inform and engage your site visitors. It can create a slick, professional look. But a Flash intro is the equivalent of trying to bulldoze your visitor with a commercial about you, you, you. (Usually with bad techno music - the horror!) And, to boot, a Flash intro can be counterproductive to any web site optimization.
Your website isn’t about imposing YOUR experience. It’s about building a compelling, informative experience. If you are thinking about a Flash intro ask yourself this:
Does the Flash intro interfere with my visitor’s ability to access the information they are looking for?
Flash intros create a block between your great content and your potential customer’s to access it. Why would you want to do that?
- One of the biggest stories this week was Dominos. And the above search results are just a small example how not having a social media plan in place can be damaging. After employees behaved very badly indeed, and uploaded their food pranks to YouTube, things went sideways for the pizza chain. USA Today explains some of the lessons to be learned.
- Well, Digg released a URL shortener that failed to impress. (That’s being kind.) Read the Truth About Digg’s DiggBar to get the inside scoop on why it’s just plain evil from an SEO point-of-view. Gene Smith offers up a few alternative options.
- What’s wrong with the phrase “social media”? Josh Bernoff elegantly explains Why 'Social Media' Sucks.
- How the Internet Community Saved Alf – need I say more?
- This is a beautiful post that deserves to be read and read again: 5 Lessons From Regular Architects That Everyone Should Embrace.
- Kelowna’s Orchard Park Shopping Mall hit one out of the park with its “Fresh-er-vention” Facebook contest. I foresee more Facebook Connect campaigns, don't you?
- Truer words were never spoken. Want to get people talking about your company? Create something newsworthy.
- Zen Habits often dishes up some great productivity tips, and I particularly liked this one: Seven Productivity Tips for People That Hate GTD.
- Not to sound all gushy, but Lee Odden is an SEO rock star. He continually puts out Top 10 material. Read his article Improve Public Relations with SEO & Social Media, and discover why keyword research, content optimization and content assets can add value to your website, your end user and your company’s brand.
- Who doesn’t love a makeover? Roberta Rosenberg does a brilliant job of explaining how TheWeddingLens.com could be improved and get a better conversion rate.
Friday Fun
What’s your Twitter zodiac sign?
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