Side by Side with Russell Weiner

I do. We got a bunch of pizza in the back, but only if you ask me easy questions. You're about to eat it, yeah.

All over 90 countries all over the world.

Yeah, more than 90 countries.

Over 18,000. 18,000 of them? Yeah, more than that.

There's a great quote that says we're a pizza company wrapped up in a technology company wrapped up in a marketing company. I think we're a little bit of everything. At the end of the day we sell a product that other folks sell. I think we do it better than everybody on the product and on the service side of it. But there needs to be a tiebreaker. When someone's hungry, why would they pick pizza versus burgers? And when they pick pizza, why would they pick Domino's? So you need to give people other reasons in addition to value and product quality. When people are buying Domino's today and they put that box, the box says a little bit about who they are. People want to make sure they make the right impression. When technology is abound and everywhere, when you put a box of Domino's there, you're not just saying that I'm buying pizza, you're saying that I know technology. Maybe I ordered this via Twitter. Even though I probably ordered on the phone. So yeah, we try to give people reasons for being other than just the product and service.

Well, we just got through a pandemic. I think the pandemic is still kind of going on, but I'll put that aside because hopefully that's only happening once in our lifetime.

Certainly from a business perspective, people were home and they needed delivery. But for our 350,000 team members around the world, it was tough. It was busy when you're maybe scared to come to work. When you're next to a hot pizza oven and you've got a mask on and you're worried about testing, you still worry. And probably don't have the amount of staff that you need because of everything that's going on. Labor shortages. So it's kind of understaffed, a little bit nervous during the beginning of the pandemic. And that really is my biggest concern, my biggest gratitude. Our frontline employees are at the front of whether it's the pandemic, hurricanes down in New Orleans. We like to say we're the last to close and the first to open. And so we're there in the service of all those who serve. In the midst of whatever calamity, we're going to be there, we're going to give the pizza away. And there's a big responsibility that lies within the communities where these frontline employees are.

Oh, I think a lot of things. I'll get back to this technology piece. But what differentiates brands is a point of view. We have a very different point of view than a lot of restaurants. If you close your eyes and think of a commercial, you probably are thinking of food shots and new products and price. There's no brand story. The story is just about a limited-time offer that anyone can do. While we launch new products, we try to do innovation, not spinovation. Spinovation is, oh, here's water, now it's water with lemon, now it's water with bubbles, now it's water with cherry, now it's got vitamins. Real innovation is a substantial change that allows a product to be there forever, not just three months. So we try to keep our product innovation to true innovation. And a lot of the innovation we do is around technology. How do we make the ordering process better? How do we make the delivery process better? How do we make the customer interaction better? Through technology. Our point of view is captured in our tagline: 'Oh yes, we did.' Because we approach everything we do so that people think after they see the commercial, 'Oh my god, did Domino's actually do that?' Because it changed their perception about the brand for the positive. And our answer has to be 'Oh yes, we did.' If the answer isn't 'Oh yes, we did,' we don't do it. That's what we try to create. I think that's what companies need to do in general. There's a sea of sameness everywhere. There's doubt in society. Actions speak louder than words. What can you do to change the frame of what people think about your brand and have them raise their hand to be associated with it? So when the box is here between us versus another box, it's not just because the food is great. The innovation lies in the systems that support the making of that pizza, the delivery, and the service experience.

I have an interesting route. Cornell undergrad, NYU grad while I worked part-time. I was at Pepsico about 11 years. I've been at Domino's 13 plus. I started my career in marketing. I graduated Cornell without taking marketing. I changed majors a few times. I thought I was going to be a doctor, but it was clear that wasn't for me. Then I thought law, so I was a political science major. But I had an internship and didn't enjoy it. I got lucky being exposed to a friend in a marketing class and helped him with a project. I felt, 'This is what I want to do.' But I'd already graduated. So I started from the bottom at an advertising agency. I want to tell young people that it's okay to check things off the list. If you actively check things off, that's just as good as figuring out what you want to do. Don't just sit back. You have to love what you do.

I'm sure I'll think of something better after this. But it was an almost mistake. When I talk about checking things off the list, I was all in pre-med. My first advanced pre-med exam at Cornell, I got a 43, which was a B. But I wasn't used to getting B's. I had done things my whole life. I was part of a publication in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. And then you're sitting there with your B even though you studied so much. That was a learning moment. I also got into law school, but I realized I had gone so far down these areas. By keeping my eyes open, I checked things off. It's easy to look back and tell the story, but the question is when you've made that mistake, you don't look back. You just move on to what do I do next.

First of all, there's never an I. Anyone who thinks there's an I gets out. There's always teamwork. But I can tell you I was part of something I feel honored to be a part of when, at the end of 2009 and early 2010, we launched a campaign for Domino's. Domino's has been around since 1960. The three years before I got there, sales were negative. Our stock was below $3. Our product wasn't in a good place nor was our brand. In fact, if you put our product in someone else's box, they would think it tasted better and vice versa. So we had a product problem and a brand problem. I told the team we have to do 10 years of marketing in 1 year. We knew we had to fix the pizza. The question was what's going to do that? We didn't have time to be up 1 or 2%. How do you do 10 years of marketing in 1 year? It's not the budget. You have to do something that's believable and breaks through. We use something called tension. The tension back in 2009 on our brand was we were a pizza company and we had this secret that our pizza didn't taste very good. There were tensions in culture at that time with the bailouts, the recession, people losing their homes, and distrust in the system. So if the world wants someone to tell the truth, we knew we had to be honest and transparent. We went on TV and played customer feedback where they said our pizza crust tastes like cardboard. We fixed the pizza. Then we went to the homes of the people who said those bad things.

The stock was $2.83 when we thought of the idea. But the courage came from the data. Don't take big risks. Jumping out of a plane looks like big risk, but if you have a parachute, you're okay. This was not about taking risk; it was a smart calculated move. We created a couple spots and a backup spot. When the ad scores came back, it was the highest scoring restaurant spot in history up till that point. So we knew we had something.

I look for diverse backgrounds. I'm decent at what I do because I did all these other things. So I look at what experiences they had. Some come straight to it, others have circuitous routes. I embrace both. Interpersonal skills are so important because individual contributors become enterprise leaders. If you can't take others with you, you're an individual contributor. So you need to see that. The third thing is how they lead, their style of leadership. Platform skills are important because you need to connect with people whether it's employees or the stock market.

Thank you. Take care.