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Wednesday 8 February 2012

A Pizza Strategy for Labour?

Friday, 15th January 2010

Hopi Sen argues that Gordon Brown needs to run a Harry Truman-like campaign. That's probably right. But Labour's problem is that Brown is in a position that's more like the Truman of 1951 than the surprisingly victorious Truman of 1948. The economy has done to Gordon waht the Korean War did to the great haberdasher and, like Truman, Brown's approval ratings have plummeted. (At one point Truman's slumped to 22%). Eventually, of course, defeat in the New Hampshire primary helped persuade Truman not to run at all and it was Adlai Stevenson who was defeated by Eisenhower.

It's too late - surely! - for Labour to persuade Brown to step aside. Last week's botched coup attempt was the final chance. So what can Labour do? Perhaps they could take some inspiration from an unlikely source: Domino's Pizza.

Domino's is awful. Even by the standards of franchised fast-food companies their pizza is terrible. When you're beaten by Pizza Hut you know you have a problem. So they've tried something risky: admitting that the product sucks. As this film demonstrates, Domino's has embarked on a Pizza Masochism Strategy:

Step One, then, is admitting you have a problem. Step Two is doing something about it. And remember, Domino's don't have to make great pizza, they just need to make pizza that is competitive with, or no less unpleasant, than that offered by Pizza Hut and their other competitors. In the political arena, Labour don't need to be good, they just need to be competitive with the Tories (aka Pizza Hut).

Granted, slamming and then reinventing your own brand is a last-ditch strategy. But it's not as though Labour have many attractive options. As Seth Stevenson puts it:

Of course it seems risky for a brand to go negative on itself. But imagine if Domino's had spent two years and tens of millions of dollars reformulating its pizza (which it did), and then launched the revamped pie with a simple "new and improved" spot. A "We took our great pizza and made it even yummier!" kind of ad. Would anyone notice? Would anyone talk or tweet about the fact that the Domino's recipe had been altered? "Google the words new and improved," says Domino's chief marketing officer Russell Weiner, "and I think you'll get about 160 million hits. They're two of the more overused words in marketing. They've become wallpaper."

[...] Who might be swayed by ads like these? A potential new customer. Someone who has always been lazy enough to order Domino's but was afraid—due either to nightmarish past experiences or just a general assumption—that the pizza would be indigestible. Someone who needs an excuse to pull the trigger again, or for the first time. For people like this, Domino's honest acknowledgment of past shortcomings might be enough to earn the brand a second look.

Indeed. Other potential Labour customers might include people who aren't convinced by the Tories' own reinvention but would like to see Labour up its own game, address its past mistakes honestly and demonstrate a commitment to doing better in the future. In this scenario, getting rid of Gordon would offer little more than yet another "new and improved" advertising campaign of the sort we've all heard too many times before. The Domino's campaign offers a different path.

Now I've not actually tasted Domino's new pizza so can't say it there really has been any (much-needed) improvement, but their campaign has at least persuaded one to contemplate the idea of trying them some time in the future when no reliably good pizza is available. And in politics, of course, there is no reliably good pizza anyway so what do Labour have to lose?

Filed under: 2010 Election (77 more articles) , Advertising (27 more articles) , Britain (677 more articles) , Brown (179 more articles) , Food (78 more articles) , Labour (2007 more articles)

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Hopi Sen

January 15th, 2010 10:26am Report this comment

Really excellent post - I've blogged about it and urged others to do the same!

maas101

January 15th, 2010 10:53am Report this comment

Wasn't this the new labour vs old labour strategy?

So they built the new labour pizza and it tasted different but still left a nasty taste in the mouth after time and resulted in Britain becoming the 'Sick man of Europe' again.

Rhoda Klapp

January 15th, 2010 11:48am Report this comment

We spent twelve years not spreading the cheese all the way up to the edge, and being mean with the meat. But we are going to do it properly now.

Except that with the pizza, you can get one from Domino's and see and taste the difference. Labour can only promise that, and we know for damn sure that they have in fact run out of cheese and the pepperoni money has been stolen by the staff, so promises, new and improved as they may be, are all that is on offer.

Which is why this is a poor analogy.

DavidDP

January 15th, 2010 12:07pm Report this comment

I've never understood how Dominos were succesful in the US; even your local pizza takeaway there has a proper woodfired oven.

Peter From Maidstone

January 15th, 2010 12:45pm Report this comment

We chose to 'treat' ourselves to a Domino's Pizza for my 45th birthday a couple of years ago and it was probably the worst meal we had ever eaten and was over-priced in any case. When I worked over a weekend last year we called out for some Papa John's pizzas and they were the best takeaway pizzas I had ever had.

Rhoda Klapp

January 15th, 2010 1:57pm Report this comment

OK, which party is Papa John?

MattF

January 15th, 2010 3:19pm Report this comment

A point about Truman-- Roosevelt died shortly after beginning his fourth term, so Truman running for President in 1952 would have been, effectively, a try for a third term. Not a popular choice, even if he didn't have a lot of other problems.

Fergus Pickering

January 15th, 2010 5:00pm Report this comment

But the new New Labour pizza can't have Brown in it, can it? So the whole thing is dead in the water, if pizzas can be dead. Incidentally, who agrees with me that Truman was the finest post war president?

Snowman

January 15th, 2010 9:46pm Report this comment

Papa John won’t do it. All Labour should do is to shout like hell that there’s no meaningful difference between their pizzas and those of the Tories, which is true anyway. Then claim that it’s better to stick with the pizza maker you know than the one you don’t. The recipe for either will change anyway as events after the election evolve.

Beefeater

January 16th, 2010 2:54am Report this comment

The commentariat is catching up to the old Soviets' trenchant political analysis of American elections: a choice between Coke and Pepsi.
Some like the classic feeling, some like to be the new generation.
An Alka-Seltzer party would get my vote.
Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, Oh what a relief it is.

Praguetory

January 16th, 2010 8:31am Report this comment

Buying a poor pizza leads to momentary dissatisfaction. As for Labour...

LondonStatto

January 16th, 2010 3:00pm Report this comment

Start by slagging off their own brand? Gerald Ratner tried that...

General Zod

January 20th, 2010 1:40pm Report this comment

Despite millions of pounds of customers money spent on advertising, most people knew Brown's Pizza was a place to avoid. Their 3" standard pizza was always miserable, expensive and a strange beige colour . It often made customers ill and consequently completely disinterested in any other forms of take away food. In an inexplicable move to try and salvage the business, Brown's developed a 76" premium pizza they gave out free to loyal customers. In return they were asked to wear a Brown's T-shirt and baseball cap every day in the hope it would attract more loyal customers. This pizza had a stuffed crust of £20 notes and was by all accounts delicious so the 'special' customers rarely complained. The standard pizza however continued to cause widespread misery and the company was now haemorrhaging money from all sides.
With business on the brink, the boss decided to consult with his his premium customers and a pie-faced sooth sayer from Nottingham as to the future. They told him the regular customers will swallow anything and that all the company had to do was simply change the colour of their cheese. The regular customers, like so many stoned students, would blithely continue ordering their cold, stale discs of grief and Brown's could then triple the price and use the extra cash to develop a free 82" lobster pizza for their most loyal customers but this time with £50 notes in the crust.
In May 2010 Brown's was burnt down by local residents.

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