The Sydney Morning Herald
10 April 2008
By Julian Lee
DOMINO'S Pizza is banking on its new phone name to put it ahead of rival Pizza Hut in the race to be top of mind when hunger strikes. The listed pizza chain last night launched its new number - 1300 Dominos - which replaces the number 131 888 it had used for more than a decade.
It is a step that the chain has not undertaken lightly, said its marketing director, Allan Collins. After more than two years of talks and research the company decided to make the change after a three-month trial of the new number in regional NSW blitzed its existing number in terms of recall. Domino's then matched people's recall with what they dialled. "And that was the deciding factor for us. It's one thing saying something but you have to look at [their] behaviour."
Mr Collins admitted that Pizza Hut's catchy jingle and number, 9481 1111 was hard to dislodge from people's minds but that if anything should do it a phone name would.
Westpac, Harvey Norman, Aussie Home Loans and Hayman Island Resort have also converted their numbers to names. But Phone Name Marketing founder Jack Singleton said progress was slow with many companies still taking a "wait and see" approach.
"I liken it to the early days of the internet when you couldn't sell ads … Now [internet publishers] haven't got enough inventory to sell," he said.
The company, which bought 2500 names from the government, and has so far sold about 60, makes its money by getting anywhere between 10 and 15 per cent of incremental sales.
Domino's spends about $30 million a year in marketing, half of which is spent on advertising in the main media.