Domino's pulls a Coke

If you are in my general age bracket I'm sure you remember when the Coca-Cola company made one of the biggest mistakes in the history of marketing. The nations top selling soda manufacturer got nervous because Pepsi, the number 2 soda company had gained a few points. So Coke tossed out their tried and true formula and brought us "New Coke" a sad excuse of a soda that tasted like a slightly reworked Pepsi. Coke drinkers were furious, they drank Coke precisely because it didn't taste like Pepsi. And the Pepsi drinkers were already drinking Pepsi, sp why change to a Coke that just tasted like Pepsi. Less than three months later Coca-Cola Classic brought back the real taste of Coke. A classic example of a marketing blunder.

I feel we are in the early stages of a similar blunder in the fast food pizza business. Domino's pizza, which practically invented the Pizza delivery business 44 years ago, and has certainly been the delivery leader, and standard setter for most of those years is introducing its all new pizza. The slogan reads, "New sauce, new crust, new cheese, but it's still round" The new crust is really just te old crust with a drizzle of garlic butter added after cooking, no big deal if you like garlic. The new cheese is a blend of mozzerella with a touch of provolone, a mice addition. It is the new sauce that I feel will be the death of #newpizza from Domino's. The new sauce is much spicier, and includes cyanne pepper, which get spicier as it sits, so a leftover slice will be even spicier. I realize some people may like the spicy, and that is why packets of red peppers have long been a staple at pizza joints. But putting it in the sauce will turn off people with sensitive stomach's like me, and young children who loved old Domino's will not like the new pizza. I predict by mid summer we will see the return of "Domino's classic" or see a huge drop in Domino's sales. So try the new Domino's and give me your opinion.

Not Easily impresed, and bulding customer Loyalty

Today I give you two posts in one, because somehow they run together, and my brain is producing blog post faster than I can post. I want to start by saying that in general, I'm not easily impressed anymore. Blame it on a cynical nature that I have gained as I age.

Now last Sunday the U2 show impressed me, but I expected to be impressed. The band paid big bucks to build a huge stage designed to impress, and it did its job. And the music impressed me, but I have always loved their music, so no surprise there. That is why I'm not going to talk about the U2 show anymore in this post (read my last two posts if you want more on the U2 show.

Instead I'm going to start by talking about 6 things that impressed me this past Friday. Six things is a lot to be impressed by, but here goes. 1) I went and saw THIS IS IT on Friday. If you are not in tune to media outlets at all, let me tell you what THIS IS IT is-- it is a film that documents the rehearsal process for what was supposed to be Michael Jackson's England tour. I was very impressed by Michal in this film. I have never been a huge MJ fan, but this film really brought me around...sadly a bit late. He was such a professional and such an amazing performer. Even in rehearsals he gave 110%. 2) The second thing that impressed my on Friday was also in the movie. It was the young woman MJ chose as his lead guitar player for the tour, her name is Orianthi (yes that's her in the picture). All I can say is AMAZING!!

Moving on from the movie, (sort of) traveling briefly back in time to last Wednesday evening at around 9:30. I went to Amazon.com and ordered Orianthi's CD. I am an amazon prime customer, so I got two day shipping. They told me it would arrive Monday (today). Back now to last Friday, I got a call a little after noon from the Postal Connection where I have a box for getting packages. They said I had a package from UPS. This of course had to be the Orianthi CD. 3) I was very impressed by how quickly Amazon had gotten my order out. 4) I was impressed that UPS had delivered in less than the 2 day time frame and 5) I was impressed that Postal connection took the time to notify that I had a package...this is an example of building customer loyalty, which will be discussed in the last part of this post.

Before I move on to customer loyalty let me tell you the last thing that impressed me. 6) Orianthi again. The same guitarist who rocked the Michael Jackson movie delivered again on her CD BELIEVE. Edgy rock music, not super heavy on profound lyrics, but fun music and great guitar work that comes to a head with the instrumental number Highly Strung, a duet with Steve Vai. a truly great album..get it.

Now on to customer loyalty. Besides my great experience with postal connection, today I wen into a vacuum shop in San Bernardino where my father-in-law had called in a payment on some vacuum bags that I was to pick up. I picked them up, but realized they were for our old vacuum, not our new one. I went back in and the right bags were three dollars more than the ones that had been paid for. I offered to pay the owner the difference, he told not to worry about it, just take the bags I needed. That builds customer loyalty. That is also how I try to work at Domino's when I answer the phone. I will give customers deals even if they don't have coupons. This drive my manager nuts, but I don't care because I know a happy customer is more likely to a) tip and b) become a return customer. Tell me I'm wrong, I dare you.

Social Media and the aging process

Going with a different color ink for the letters tonight, what do you think? Tonight's topic is social media and the aging process. As I age, I find myself more and more into this social media stuff, which is supposedly the domain of the younger generation. At least that's how it started.

My first real experience with social media came with MySpace probably about 4 or 5 years ago. Several of my friends from Domino's kept telling me how great it was, how you could reach out to your friends, how you could keep updated on music, etc. These were all pretty much teenagers I worked with, and I brushed MySpace off as just something for kids. Then I got an invite from my friend Doug Brown from my KLoRD days. He had set up a page to promote his music, so I joined, and quickly found I enjoyed it. I even did a bit of blogging. At time I had over 300 "friends", but most of these were bands, or people who were interested in the same bands I was. A few were friends mostly from Domino's, and young people I knew on the mountain here. I had only one or two friends near my age, a few voices from my past. I made my MySpace page as load and flashy as I could, and tried to convince myself I was as young and hip as most of my friends there. But as time went on I felt less and less connected to my MySpace friends.

Then about a year ago I think, I started hearing, "I switched from MySpace to Facebook, come Join me." from more and more MySpace friends. And so, I did. And it has been amazing. I have found friends from college, high school and the church I grew up in along with my KLoRd fiends, Mo Media friends, Camp O-Ongo friends and of course Toyota friends (All places I've worked). I currently have 210 and know at least 200 of them personally. I read an article a few months ago that "old people" are ruining facebook. By their definition, I'm pretty sure I'm old, and I'm guessing most of my friends are too (My dad is on facebook and he's 82). I'm not sure what we've done to ruin facebook, but I say lets keep ruining it.

For months I was happy to stay in contact on facebook. I kept hearing about this Twitter thing, but had no interest. You know us old folks are slow to try anything new. Then a job as internet information director, or something like that came up at work, and I applied, but it said you needed to know twitter, so I quickly signed up for twitter. I didn't get the job, (Probably too old and unhip) and quickly abandoned my Twitter account.

Then came the swine flu scare and I found out that the CDC had a twitter account that posted swine flu updates. As any old guy who fears dying of swine flu would do, I jumped on twitter and started following CDC updates. Purely out of curiosity I started following a celebrity or two...oops! I was hooked. I now follow 152 people. Athletes, authors, celebrities, dancers, and a couple people I actually know.
I think it is a fun way to get a touch of who these celebrities are as real people. that is if you can find the real people from the fakes. Thank Twitter for Verified accounts to make this easier.

And now with Blogger, I am attacking the blogsphere and hope to gain some attention (or at least a few more comments) as a writer, so someday the novel I'm trying to write might be published, or at least made available on Kindle before I am too old to enjoy the royalties. So please read my blog post. Comment on them here (my comments are open to anyone, not just Blogger members). Share them with your friends. And promise you'll by my novel....whenever it gets published.