Live Communication 82 | SunMatrix Ramble

Domino’s: Pizza Holdouts

When your friends “rat you out” to a pizza brand

Domino’s campaign against consumers who cannot stand its pizza continues. Crispin Porter + Bogusky is back with a new facet of the “New Pizza” campaign. The brand sets out to harass three poor unsuspecting souls who have been ratted out as not eating Domino’s.

The premise is that “only a handful” of people have not tried the new pizza recipe Domino’s came out with.

The mechanic: turn trial into a social bounty hunt

The mechanism is simple and slightly mean in a way that makes people watch. Identify the “holdout”. Make their resistance a story. Then recruit their friends as the distribution layer, so the campaign spreads through personal networks instead of brand channels alone. Because the invitation comes from someone you know, it carries social proof and mild pressure that paid media cannot.

In US quick-service marketing, “get them to try it once” is often the hardest job, because taste perceptions and jokes about quality can become cultural default settings.

Why it lands: public call-out plus a clear path to redemption

This works because the tension is real. People do have strong opinions about Domino’s. Making the holdout visible creates social pressure, but the campaign balances that pressure by offering an easy way out. Try the new recipe. Join the conversation. Stop being the exception.

Extractable takeaway: When you use public call-out, pair it with a low-friction “redemption” action so people can update their stance without losing face.

The real question is whether your trial problem is a product problem or a permission problem, and which one you can solve fastest.

The business intent: accelerate reappraisal of the product

This is not a love-brand play. It is a credibility reset. Domino’s wants lapsed and sceptical customers to re-test the product, so the “new recipe” can replace the old mental model.

After this, Domino’s reported doubling its profits last quarter to $23.6 million.

Forcing first trial at scale: practical moves

Make the barrier explicit. “You have not tried it” is a clearer friction point than “please consider our brand”.
Recruit friends, not audiences. Social pressure works best when it comes from someone the holdout knows.
Give the story a role people can play. “Bounty hunter” is a participation frame, not just a message.
Link the stunt to a measurable behaviour. The only KPI that matters here is trial, not views.

So do you know a pizza holdout? Find out how to become a Taste Bud Bounty Hunter at www.PizzaHoldouts.com. A “Taste Bud Bounty Hunter” is the friend who nominates a holdout and nudges them to try the new recipe.

A few fast answers before you act

What is Domino’s “Pizza Holdouts” in one sentence?

A campaign that targets people who still have not tried the “new” Domino’s recipe, using friends to identify them and turning first-trial into a playful hunt.

What is the core mechanism?

Social recruitment plus a role people can play. Friends “rat out” holdouts, and the brand reframes outreach as a bounty-hunt style participation story.

Why does using friends change the effectiveness?

Because social pressure is more persuasive when it comes from someone you know. The message is carried by relationships, not just media.

What is the real KPI this format is trying to move?

Trial. The stunt is designed to force the first bite, not just generate views or talk.

What is the most transferable takeaway?

If your growth problem is “first experience”, make the barrier explicit, recruit peer influence, and design a participation frame that points to the behaviour you want.

3D Holograms: Two Marketing-World Examples

3D holograms are a great way to attract and engage consumers. Here, “3D holograms” refers to hologram-style displays that use animation to create a depth illusion in a physical setting. They can be quite effective if your brand is having trouble getting noticed or if your product’s capabilities can best be described using images and animation.

Though brands find it daunting to venture into this, there are still some brands out there bold enough to try it. Here are some nice examples.

Why holograms can cut through

The strength of a hologram-style display is that it behaves like moving product theater. Because it behaves like moving product theater, it can stop people mid-walk, and it can compress a lot of “show, do not tell” explanation into a few seconds. In retail aisles and brand events, it competes against the surrounding noise, not against other media placements.

Extractable takeaway: Use depth and motion only when they reduce explanation time or make the core action instantly legible. If depth is not doing work, you are paying for novelty.

The real question is whether motion plus depth makes the story easier to grasp than a flat screen or static print. When the answer is yes, the format can earn attention fast.

Coca Cola In-Store Display

This example shows how a hologram-style display can work as an in-store attention magnet. The content is pure visual storytelling, which makes it easy to understand at a glance and easy to remember later.

Samsung Jet Launch

At launches, holograms can do a different job. They help dramatize product capability and create a sense of spectacle that standard stage content often struggles to match. That spectacle then becomes a shareable proof that something “big” happened.

What to steal if you are considering holograms

Pick one message that benefits from depth. If depth is not doing work, you are paying for novelty.
Design for walk-by comprehension. People should get it in under three seconds.
Keep the loop tight. Short, repeatable sequences beat long narratives in retail and event contexts.
Make the hero action visible. If the product feature is the star, animate that feature, not abstract brand graphics.

A few fast answers before you act

When do 3D hologram displays make sense for marketing?

When you need fast attention in a physical space, or when animation plus perceived depth explains the product better than flat media.

What is the main advantage over a normal screen?

Presence. The illusion of depth makes the content feel more like an object in the space, which can increase stop power and recall.

What is the biggest execution risk?

Paying for the format without a story that needs it. If the creative is not designed around depth and motion, the result feels like expensive wallpaper.

How should success be measured?

Dwell time, footfall impact near the unit, assisted recall, and any downstream action that matters to your context, like store inquiry, trial, or social amplification.

What is a practical way to keep cost under control?

Start with one hero unit and a short content loop, then scale only if you can prove incremental attention and understanding versus simpler formats.

James Ready: Bar-Ter Campus Tour

It’s a well-known fact. Students are relatively poor. They have to choose between spending their little money on beer or food, beer or books, and beer or transportation. So Leo Burnett Toronto created The James Ready Bar-Ter Campus Tour. “Bar-Ter” is the campaign’s name for a cap-for-essentials barter mechanic. A way for students to have both. Beer and other necessities.

Students were encouraged to spend their money on James Ready Beer, collect their beer caps, and trade the caps for semi-awesome and useful stuff like detergent, soap, mac n’ cheese, socks and so on.

Beer caps as a campus currency

The idea is disarmingly straightforward. A beer cap becomes a token. Tokens become necessities. Suddenly the brand is not only the thing you buy for a night out, it is also the thing that helps you restock the basics you keep postponing.

Bar-Ter succeeds because it reframes “cheap beer” as “smart trade.” It makes the buyer feel savvy, not broke.

How the Bar-Ter loop works

The loop is simple enough to explain in one breath. Buy beer. Keep caps. Swap caps for stuff you actually need. That simplicity matters because campus promotions only spread when the mechanic is instantly repeatable and easy to tell a friend.

It also builds a visible trail of participation. Caps pile up. People compare counts. The “currency” becomes social proof.

In consumer brands that compete on price and habit, promotions work best when they turn a purchase into a practical ritual people want to repeat.

The real question is whether your promotion creates a repeatable habit or just a one-off spike.

Why it lands with students

Students do not need another discount. They need a way to justify the purchase. Bar-Ter gives them that justification by attaching the brand to everyday utility. The prizes are not aspirational. They are deliberately ordinary, which makes the reward feel honest.

Extractable takeaway: When your audience is cash-tight, utility rewards can justify the purchase better than discounts, because the payoff feels like help, not hype.

There is also a small psychological trick. Collecting caps turns spending into progress. Even if the reward is modest, the accumulation feels like getting somewhere.

What the brand is buying with this promotion

This is not only a giveaway. It is a loyalty habit built on a physical artefact. If you want the cap, you need the brand. If you want enough caps, you need repeat purchase. And because the redemption items are useful, the reward feels earned rather than random.

Industry listings later associated this work with awards recognition, which fits the pattern. A simple mechanic, strong cultural truth, and a clear behaviour change.

Bar-Ter moves worth copying

Turn packaging into a token. If the token is already in the product, you lower friction and increase repeat.
Reward with utility, not luxury. Useful items make the promo feel like help, not hype.
Make progress visible. Collecting is part of the satisfaction. Design the “pile up” effect.
Keep the exchange rate legible. If people cannot quickly understand how to win, they will not try.
Match the reward to the audience truth. The best prize is the one that feels tailored to their real life.

A few fast answers before you act

What is the James Ready Bar-Ter Campus Tour?

It is a student-focused promotion where people collect James Ready beer caps and trade them for everyday essentials like detergent, soap, mac n’ cheese, and socks.

Why use caps instead of coupons?

Caps are physical proof of purchase that naturally accumulate. They make participation visible and social, and they create a repeat-buy loop without requiring people to track paper discounts.

What makes this kind of promotion feel “smart” rather than cheap?

Utility rewards. When the payoff is something you genuinely need, the purchase feels justified and the brand feels practical rather than desperate.

What’s the biggest risk with token-based promotions?

Redemption friction. If the exchange process is unclear, inconvenient, or understocked, the promotion becomes frustration and the brand takes the blame.

How can a non-beer brand adapt this idea?

Use a built-in product element as the token and exchange it for items that reduce your audience’s everyday pain. The token must be easy to collect and the reward must be meaningfully useful.