Stephanie Fierman On The Importance of IT/Marketing Alignment
Friday April 03rd 2009, 9:00 am
Filed under: advertising,customer service,Google,Internet,women,women online,word of mouth

Whoops!

In December, Domino’s created an online-only promotion offering a free pizza to site visitors using the promo code ”bailout.” The promotion never got final approval internally… but someone didn’t tell the pizza retailer’s online tech team.

A clever consumer living in a suburb of Cincinnati somehow caught on to the live promo code last week and before you can see “meat lovers special,” Domino’s had given away 11,000 free pizzas.  In less than 24 hours.

The news spread quickly, fueled in part by online moms at sites like www.CincyMomsLikeMe.com.  If you’re curious about the power of online moms and aren’t familiar with the Motrin Moms event last November, I really would suggest you check it outDo not screw with these ladies!

Things became even more complicated by the fact that Domino’s retail stores are franchised.  A man who owns 14 locations in the Cincy area thinks he gave away somewhere between 600 and 700 pizzas.  Corporate has promised to reimburse all franchisees.  Maybe the stores will even see an upside:  the event got hundreds of people to try the new ordering engine at Dominos.com (which is pretty good, by the way).

Depending on how you look at things, Dominos is either lucky or unlucky the promotion wasn’t discovered two days later – on April Fool’s Day…


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