Last Friday, I was able to crash Modern Healthcare’s Healthcare Transformation Summit here in Austin. Our Chief Digital Officer Colin Foster sat on a panel with some outstanding industry peers to discuss healthcare’s digital transformation. The conversation hosted by David Chou was extremely interesting and insightful, but it’s the opening statement that I continue to think about.
What company has transformed digital?
The obvious answers come to mind: Amazon, Google, Facebook maybe? Sure, those companies have all changed the digital landscape in some way. But Colin, David, Neil Gomes and Anthony Nguyen, MD all seemed to agree on an out-of-the-box answer: Domino’s Pizza.
I did not expect four senior-level digital healthcare professionals to praise Domino’s Pizza, but yet they did. I was still associating Domino’s with large group gatherings, a back-up dinner option after a failed cooking attempt and late nights in college. A digital mastermind? No way.
The panel talked about some market research, the pizza tracker and the loyalty app before switching gears to the true healthcare space. On the spot, I did a quick Google search and I was amazed. It was true, Domino’s is the unexpected hero of the digital world.
I had no clue that Domino’s stock price went from $11.03 in January of 2010 to $284.97 today. Domino’s took ownership of their “cardboard-like” pizza and changed the recipe, announced in their “Oh Yes We Did” campaign. Next, the company encouraged customers to share their opinions on social media. The floodgates opened, and the most popular opinions and suggested solutions got rewarded in the form of money. And that’s when Domino’s became “an e-commerce company that happens to sell pizza.”
In the next nine years, they launched the pizza tracker and no-click ordering, their “pizza theater” concept, a chatbot feature, a snapchat campaign, delivery hotspots, pothole paving, an any-pizza loyalty program, and, of course, GIFs. Oh, and the pizza company was also named the 2018 Tech Accelerator of the Year. That’s a lot of innovation and transformation.
By the way, did you know that today you can order Domino’s from Slack, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, smart watches/speakers/TVs plus all the normal ways (call, online, app)? That’s over 15 ways to order. Domino’s is everywhere, but isn’t that the point?
The rest of the Healthcare Digital Transformation panel was impactful, on-topic and taught me lots about how payers and providers are contributing to this digital push. But I was back down the Domino’s rabbit hole the moment it ended. In my opinion, the most interesting part of it all is that here I am writing about Domino’s and hardly mentioning the pizza itself. I’ll admit I was experiencing and enjoying all of this change and innovation as a consumer and customer, but never stopped to appreciate it as a marketer. Better late than never.
What’s next for Domino’s? Self-driving cars and robot deliveries apparently. I guess one thing is for sure — there will be pizza in the future.
Taylor Watson is the Corporate Communications Manager at HCB Health. Connect with Taylor on LinkedIn.
