Ad Campaign of the Week: Domino's Ad Channels Ferris Bueller

If you’ve ever watched the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day off, then a new ad campaign from Domino’s is likely to look pretty familiar. The company enlisted the help of Joe Keery, best known for his role on the Netflix hit show "Stranger Things," to play the lead in the ads. So how many consumers appreciate the ads enough to buy Domino’s pizza more regularly? We asked 1,000 respondents about their pizza buying habits and then tested the impact of the ad.

Pizza Consumers

In Ask Your Target Market’s latest online survey, 15% of respondents said that they buy pizza at least a few times each week. 51% said they buy pizza a few times a month. 22% do so a few times every three months. 11% said they buy pizza less frequently than once every three months. And just 2% said that they aren’t pizza consumers at all.Of those who purchase pizza at least on occasion, 68% said that they’ve at least tried Domino’s pizza. And 36% said they get Domino’s regularly. Only Pizza Hut was more popular in terms of regular consumers.

Domino’s Ad

Overall, 17% of pizza consumers said that they would be certain or practically certain about choosing Domino’s the next time they purchase pizza. And 21% said it would be very probable. Of those who viewed the Domino’s ad, 18% said they would be certain or practically certain about choosing Domino’s for their next pizza purchase. And 21% said it would be very probable.In addition, 75% of those who viewed the ad said that they’ve watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. And 33% have watched Stranger Things. Of those who have seen Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, 17% said they would be certain about choosing Domino’s for their next pizza purchase, while 21% said that it would be very probable. And of those who have watched Stranger Things, 24% said they would be certain about choosing Domino’s, while another 24% said it would be very probable.

Brand Attributes

In general, pizza consumers associated words like tasty, great, delicious, cheap, fast, quality and affordable with the Domino’s brand. Those who viewed the Domino’s ad were likely to use many of those same qualifiers. But viewers were also more likely to describe the brand as innovative.

Key Takeaways

The Domino’s ad only made a negligible impact on consumers as a whole. And even though the ad is based on Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, those who have seen the movie were not much more likely to see an impact from the ad. However, those who recognized the actor in the commercial seemed to be a bit more likely to change their pizza buying habits based on the ad. Of course, Stranger Things is a Netflix show, so Domino’s can’t exactly air commercials during it. But the company could potentially target viewers who are likely to have seen the show by advertising during similar types of programming or during shows that target young viewers who are likely to subscribe to streaming services like Netflix.You can view the complete survey results in the widget below and be sure to click “Open Full Report” to take advantage of all the chart and filter options.Photo Credit: Making delicious pizza by Marjan Lazarevski under CC BY-ND 2.0What do you want to know? If you need some consumer insights on a particular topic, let us know in the comments below and we’ll consider it for an upcoming survey post.

Results were collected on March 24 via AYTM’s online survey panel.