Mea Culpa Marketing
Most printers understand the importance of marketing, but it somehow seems to get put on the back burner as they deal with production issues, personnel crises, selling efforts and the like. With most of the capabilities necessary to mount an effective marketing campaign, printers too often put their own marketing efforts last—if they do any marketing at all. Part of the problem is that marketing usually does not have an immediate and measurable result. It takes lots of repetition and often it is difficult to directly connect sales increases to specific marketing efforts.
What is the difference between marketing and advertising? For the most part, advertising promotes a product while marketing promotes a brand. That’s not to say both can’t be accommodated in the same vehicle. Papa John’s latest ad campaign has a marketing message and a product offer. “Better ingredients, better pizza—Papa John’s” is the marketing message, while two one-topping pizzas for $12.99 is the product offer. That’s pretty straightforward.
However, Domino’s latest marketing campaign puzzles me. Basically, it says that the company has been listening to customer complaints that its sauce tastes like ketchup and its crust tastes like cardboard and they are going to do better. Better crust, better cheese, better sauce—at least, better than that stuff we’ve been pushing for the last several years. That is one bummer of a marketing message. “We’ll try not to suck as bad as we did before.” The product offer: If you still don’t like it, we’ll give you your money back—all of it.
I’d call that “mea culpa marketing” and have serious doubts that it will accomplish much except to remind people of the reason they switched to Papa John’s in the first place.