Trading secrets for slices
“Even though Domino's is Canada's Favourite Pizza, our handmade pan pizza is more of a hidden gem, so we wanted to share one of our lesser-known but best-loved products with a wider audience. This social campaign is about celebrating people’s passion for discovering new ways to enjoy their favourite quick-service restaurants whether it’s an off-menu item or a menu hack. We wanted to reward fans with a taste of our own best-kept secret.”
Ken Harrison
Chief Marketing Officer, Domino’s Pizza of Canada
These days, secret menus are the only menus people seem to care about. There are literally millions of secret menu videos on social, with influencers sharing endless ways to hack McDonald’s, Starbucks, Subway and countless other QSR’s. A quick scan of #FoodieTok validates these numbers, with tens of millions of views against #secretmenu and #menuhack hashtags. It’s no secret that the secret menu phenomenon is only growing.
All of this seems great except for one tiny detail: Domino’s doesn’t have a secret menu. They did however, have an unintentionally secret item, buried deep in their menu, forgotten by their fans. We took this overlooked menu item - the Pan Pizza - and launched it like a secret. Enter “Trade Secrets”: the insider discount for insider info.
Dishing out discounts
We asked Canadians for their best fast food secret menu hacks on TikTok and Meta, and trolled our competitors by targeting their employees in front of their own restaurants with mobile billboards. We turned our fans into informants, trading their secret menu intel in exchange for ours - 50% off golden crusted Domino’s Pan Pizza.
“The campaign started with a conversation about people’s inability to keep secrets. All of these online menu hacks and so-called secret menus are anything but. People love sharing them. We realized we had a secret we were willing to tell so why not reward people for sharing theirs?”
Josh Stein
Partner, Chief Creative Officer, LG2
A secret no more
The results were far from hush hush. In less than two weeks, we exposed more than 400 competitor secrets from over 25 chains, had an engagement rate 150x Domino’s norm on Meta, and 8x on TikTok, added thousands of followers on its social channels, and most importantly, increased sales of pan pizzas by 45% year-over-year.
We created a legion of new pan pizza lovers, and proved that the best way to sell an overlooked menu item might just be to keep it a secret.
Client
Founded in 1960, Domino's Pizza is the largest pizza company in the world, with a significant business in both delivery and carryout pizza. It ranks among the world's top public restaurant brands with a global enterprise of more than 20,000 stores in over 90 markets. Domino's had global retail sales of over $17.5 billion in 2022, with over $8.7 billion in the U.S. and nearly $8.8 billion internationally. In the first quarter of 2023, Domino's had global retail sales of over $4.1 billion, with over $2.0 billion in the U.S. and nearly $2.1 billion internationally. Its system is comprised of independent franchise owners who accounted for 99% of Domino's stores as of the end of the first quarter of 2023. Emphasis on technology innovation helped Domino's achieve approximately two-thirds of all global retail sales in 2022 from digital channels. In the U.S., Domino's generated more than 80% of U.S. retail sales in 2022 via digital channels and has developed several innovative ordering platforms, including those for Apple CarPlay, Google Home, Amazon Alexa, Facebook Messenger, and more.
