Domino’s looks to bite into all-day dining market with BurgerPizza

 

Domino’s has rolled out a new product for the Indian market, BurgerPizza. Communicating this is a new campaign conceptualised by Contract Advertising (film above).

 

With this launch, the pizza chain is looking to eat into the all-day dining space, informed S Murugan Narayanaswamy, senior vice president, marketing, Domino’s Pizza India.

 

Speaking with Campaign India, he explained, "There were two reasons for the launch. One is our normal innovation process where we are looking at avenues of growth continuously. In the last four or five quarters, the kind of growth we are seeing in the category and for Domino’s could me more. Innovation is always a good means to grow. 

 

“We scan for opportunities. In one of those scans, we have found out that pizza has become a meal replacement now as the lunch and dinner time sees higher sales. Also, what we found is that burgers and sandwiches are consumed all day and are not considered meal replacements. Further, pizzas are consumed with the family, in slices, while the burger is individually consumed. Sticking to our DNA, the BurgerPizza was the answer to this solution."

 

So how big is the market for each? He said, "The burger and pizza market are pretty much the same size. We are leading in the pizza market but we want a pie of the burger sales too. So the idea is to gain a share from the all-day dining market. I want to take a decent share from that occasion. Pizza is a comfort food. It comes to your house, while you go out for your burger."

 

Elaborating the product challenge, he said, "Combination of two foods is not that easy. We have done it strategically. The buns go through the oven, we have removed the patty, put fresh tomato sauce inside, lots of veggies and mozzarella. So, the consumer eats this and feels as fulfilled as he does when he eats a pizza. People have mixed formats before but not with fundamental truths."

 

On the campaign, the brief to the agency was to have a film ‘as innovative and different as the product itself’. 

 

"We wanted to transform the world of burgers and the category. Secondly, we wanted to show what the ingredients are and that ‘it is fundamentally a pizza’ to be shown in the campaign. Third, fire has great significance in our business and in life, as it purifies these things. The oven-fired nature gives huge solace to the consumer. Through the tonality we have tried a real world scene getting into a dream sequence and coming back." 

 

Burger chain KFC rolled out Chizza last year, also a 'burger pizza'. 

On whether Domino's was inspired by this or other similar attempts, Narayanswamy said, "The reason for calling it what we have is that we are quite clear that it’s a pizza and not a burger. A lot of people have launched pizza burgers before. We know of pizza burgers which have the patty inside. This, BurgerPizza is a unique product and doesn’t have a patty inside. The inspiration has come from cultural truth and a growth opportunity. I think it’s very unique. The #BurgerPizza has become a rage even outside India. People in the US are tweeting about it."

 

Narayanswamy did not rule out adoption in international markets, if it succeeds here.

 

The BurgerPizza range is priced lower than the average pizza at Rs 89.