How Domino’s V-Day campaign helped Gen-Z move beyond situationships | #casestudy

Domino’s #SayItWithAPizza campaign explored the new dating arena by creating social media characters that enabled the audience to understand new age concepts such as situationship, garnering 18M+ engagement. Here’s how they did it.

Ahead of Valentine’s Day this year, Domino’s India launched a three-part video series campaign #SayItWithAPizza. The campaign was created to cater to the GenZ dating phenomenon: Situationships! Here’s a Case Study on how they connected with the youth by using social media platforms and dating apps.

Brand

Domino’s India

Agency

Schbang

Category Introduction 

The food market in India has grown steadily and in 2018 it was valued at 3.7 trillion. Casual dining restaurants and QSR (Quick Service Restaurants) account for more than 74% of the market. 

This sector is anticipated to experience growth at a CAGR of 9.0% over 2018-2023. A growing ‘work from home’ culture, along with an increasing desire for convenience, and higher discounts has seen a rise in takeaway sales rise, especially among value-minded and convenience-first consumers.

Brand Introduction

Brought to you by Jubilant Food Works, Domino’s India has been credited as the most popular choice for pizza for striking a perfect blend of local and international tastes, with 20-minute delivery and affordability. It has 1760 stores in India across 387 cities.

The brand is centered around the values of ‘togetherness’ and ‘celebrations’ through all its social media and marketing communication.

Summary

Conceptualised by Schbang and produced by Schbang Motion Pictures, the campaign, #SayItWithAPizza explored the new dating arena of situation-ships where pizza becomes the medium of love. Pizza lovers could use Domino’s as a means of moving from an ‘undefined entanglement’ into a ‘meaningful relationship’ one slice at a time. 

The campaign consisted of three films that follow the story of Meghna and Arjun, a young “couple”. All three films, posted over a period of six days, took the audience through different phases of the couple’s situations through 3 Domino’s orders.

The campaign also created Instagram and Bumble accounts for Meghna and Arjun, enabling the audience to stay tuned to daily updates. 

Objective

Problem Statement: How does Domino’s make a Valentine’s Day campaign for a generation that hates labelling their relationships? 

Solution: By making pizza their new love language!

Brief

The brief was to create a moment of togetherness where Domino’s acts as a ‘catalyst of connections’ during Valentine’s Day keeping in mind the current reality of the dating scenario in India.

Since gushy romantic pictures have always been the Valentine’s Day trend, Domino’s had to figure out how GenZ celebrated this day of love, identify the gap and create our own distinction for the target audience. 

Also Read: Case Study: How the Too Yumm! influencer campaign gained over 307Mn+ views

Creative Idea

According to a brand study conducted in 2022, there has been a 49% increase among young singles who preferred situationships over relationships. This survey indicated that GenZ daters perceive situationships as the ideal way to cultivate a relationship with minimal stress. 

Tapping into this new lingo of modern-day love, the idea was to make #SayItWithAPizza synonymous with expressing love through the means of Domino’s India’s new launch: heart-shaped pizzas. 

The aim was to show how love blossoms from a situationship to a relationship for a GenZ couple over the course of three orders and three-part film series. Domino’s aspired to position “sharing pizza” as a love language and become the catalyst to elevate romantic relationships. 

Challenges 

The main challenge was to humanise the characters so the audience was invested in their journey. To tackle this, Domino’s and Schbang created their profiles on Instagram and Bumble. Their profiles included authentic day-in-their-lives content – photo dumps, cute animal posts, outing with friends, mirror selfies, etc. like every other Gen Z individual on the ‘Gram.

Domino’s had the characters posting polls on Instagram stories to maintain engagement, relevance and retention. Another challenge was to retain the attention since it was a three-part series. To deal with this, Domino’s spread out their campaign within a span of six days. A film was released every alternate day. Between them, conversations on Twitter, Instagram and even Quora enabled the followers to stay tuned. 

Execution

Instagram Reels is a platform which has high relevance today. With people scrolling through them everywhere, all the time! This behaviour motivated Domino’s to switch to the all-new vertical format. The whole campaign was shot in a vertical format. 

The brand realised the best way to resonate with the audience was to keep the campaign as close to the GenZ audience. The idea was to show how a situationship slowly transforms into a relationship over the course of three orders.

Phase 1: 

The first phase had Domino’s starting the conversation around situationships on their social media handles. It was to tap into the pulse of the Gen Z audience that struggles to navigate through undefined romantic bonds aka situationships. The characters also had their respective profiles on the online dating platform, Bumble for a rather interactive approach. 

Phase 2: 

The second phase was spread across six days of sharing the film divided into three parts via Instagram Reels. The first film focussed on establishing the situationship via fun banter between the two characters. The second film focussed on them taking risky cheesy moves towards each other and keeping the audience hooked as to what happens next.

The last film had the Gen Z couple making it official by posting their pizza date on social media on Valentine’s Day. They celebrated it with heart-shaped pizza, a special offering crafted for the occasion.

To ensure the conversation kept going: the brand kept up prompts and posts on Instagram and Twitter with a special post even on Quora where they shared tips on situationships and how to #SayItWithAPizza. 

Phase 3: 

After all the reels were posted, Domino’s opened the platform to its followers to share their photos and featured couples on their Instagram handle.

This was followed by micro-influencer collaborations with couples who posted how their love transitioned from a situationship to a relationship and how they’re celebrating Valentine’s Day with a heart-shaped pizza, a limited festive offering by Domino’s.  

Results

The overall campaign reached out to more than 60 million people and garnered 18 million+ engagement with positive conversations surrounding the campaign across platforms. 

Talking about the campaign, Sandeep Anand, EVP and Chief Marketing Officer, of Domino’s Pizza India said, “We have always positioned Domino’s as the perfect companion for special moments and creating an experience for those who share a pizza, whether it be family, friends or more. It celebrates relationships – whether they are labelled or not. For those who aren’t sure, valentine’s is the perfect time to #SayItWithAPizza. The campaign has taken a unique spin on a story relatable to all the younglings out there in a situationship.”

On the conceptualisation, Sushant Vithaldas, Business Head, Schbang Bangalore said “For a generation that refuses to be bound by labels of any kind, ‘situationship’ is the buzzword that is “rocking the dating universe”. Dominos is all set to interact with the new young audience and therefore we wanted to reach out to them using the formats and scenarios they find most relatable. The campaign brings out Domino’s proposition of celebrating moments of togetherness in the voice of GenZ.”

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