Domino's Pizza Archives - The Drew Blog

“I’m just the guy who gets it,” offers the humble yet vivacious Ramon DeLeon when explaining his unlikely rise from delivering pizzas around Chicago’s lakeshore to delivering keynote addresses on social media around the world. What seems to be intuition for DeLeon is in fact an uncanny ability to be way ahead of the curve, to observe what’s going on with his target and adapt accordingly. DeLeon gets it in a way that is both inspiring and enlightening, offering a tasty guide to social media success.

1. It’s Not About the Pizza

Marketers long-trained to push out messaging, often look at social media as a new channel to tell their story. A few minutes with DeLeon and they will realize the folly of this approach. In fact, I spent 40 minutes on the phone with DeLeon talking through his social media success stories before the quality of his pizza even came up. The truth is that when it comes to social media, it is simply not about the pizza. “My focus has always been on the consumer,” noted DeLeon. “Out of ten tweets, maybe only one will mention our product.”

2. It’s About Connecting with the Customer

Most companies pay lip service to customer service, hiding behind phone trees and avoiding intimate interactions. DeLeon, on the other hand, has been on a first name basis with his customers ever since his days delivering pizza. Explained DeLeon, “My whole thing is the connection with the customer—how can I help you?” Starting first with Instant Messaging then Facebook in the mid-90’s, DeLeon established tight bonds with the local college kids so much so that when they graduated, those students brought Domino’s with them into their new companies.

3. Make Deposits in the “Good Will” Bank

Many CEO’s ask their marketing head’s to focus on “things that deliver immediate ROI,” often at the expense of relationship building. DeLeon likens marketing to dating, noting that he “always includes customers in marketing pieces to give some love back after spending [their] hard earned dollars and to create very strong bonds.” These bonds were money in the bank when Domino’s faced it’s YouTube video crisis in 2009. Noted DeLeon, “because of the relationships we had with customers they had our back, so they still would order and support in confidence.”

4. Fight Social Media Fire with Social Media Water

When two young Domino’s employees in North Carolina posted a video of them cooking a pizza with cheese they’d put up their nose, Domino’s Corporate and the local franchise were both caught completely off guard. Not so DeLeon. He immediately created his own video, noting how horrific the other one was, and then follow up with anyone in Chicago who commented online about the offending video. Local bloggers and tweeters responded favorably to his outreach, acknowledging that DeLeon had been “part of the social media scene forever” and would “never let such a thing happen in his stores.” Remarkably, DeLeon’s store sales actually rose during this period while nationally Domino’s took a hit and the local NC franchise ultimately went out of business.

5. Learn To Apologize (Really Well)

Admitting a mistake often comes hard to corporate America. DeLeon, on the other hand, has turned apologizing into a PR-generating, customer-satisfying art form. When a well-known local blogger had a problem with a delivery and wrote about, DeLeon responded with an amazingly heartfelt video apology they he posted on his YouTube and Facebook pages. In the video he and his shamefaced manager invited the blogger into the store to “make things right.” DeLeon’s apology video has been watched over 125,000 times and is regularly showcased in speeches by marketing gurus Seth Godin and Jeanne Bliss.

6. Don’t Get Bogged Down by Trying to Measure Everything

Much to the chagrin of marketers, not every effort, online or otherwise, can be tied to sales. DeLeon believes that “sometimes there are too many metrics,” adding, “how much do you love your wife?” As an example, DeLeon points to a poster program in his stores that invites customers to take pictures of themselves in front of a Domino’s poster and share them with friends. “I’m not telling them to tag these or anything—just share them with your world,” noted DeLeon, who praises the program as generating good will and giving his customers something to do while they wait for their pizzas.

7. Make Each Program Your Own

Geo-based social networks like Foursquare are just emerging as powerful tools for local retailers. Not surprisingly, DeLeon was one of the first retailers to try Foursquare in Chicago, but did not settle for the norm of giving something free to the people who checked-in most at each of his stores. Instead, DeLeon challenged his “mayors” to take responsibility like a real mayor; “to do whatever [they] think [they] gotta do to keep me in business!” By putting the onus on his best customers to “represent” his stores and rewarding them by allowing them to give free pizzas to whomever they chose, DeLeon tightened his relationships and made the program his own.

8. Have Fun and Keep it Real

Fun is not a word that is heard a lot of outside of start-ups. Ramon DeLeon evaluates his own success with two questions, “am I having fun?” and “are our sales and profitability up?” The fun part for DeLeon is a constant, since he clearly loves connecting with people, whether he is on stage, behind a counter, on Facebook/Twitter/Foursquare or in his homemade video shout-outs. Regardless of the channel, DeLeon tries to be the same person and advises all others to take this approach. Concluded DeLeon, “there are real people behind these tweets and I just want to have fun with them.”

Final Note: While DeLeon could not offer actual sales figures, he noted with pride that sales growth in his stores over the last 18-months has significantly out-performed both the Chicago market and national average for Domino’s stores. This article first appeared on FastCompany.com.

For want of a belt, Ramon DeLeon almost didn’t get the part-time job delivering pizzas that launched his remarkable career. Fortunately for us, he overcame this hurdle just as he has so many before and since, becoming a highly successful businessman, not to mention the most effective practitioner of social media I’ve yet to meet.

How he got from delivering pizzas to delivering keynotes on social media is a fascinating tale of chutzpah and perseverance, of street smarts and tech savvy, providing a road map for any kid from any neighborhood, anyone willing that is to start small and think big. A two-part series, this first one focuses on the business lessons gleaned from an extensive interview with Ramon a few days ago.

Borrow a Belt (i.e. Do Whatever Else it Takes to Get Started)

Looking for a part-time job while still in school, DeLeon put in a cold call to a local Domino’s store. Having already delivered newspapers in the same Chicago neighborhood, DeLeon made his case well enough over the phone that they told him to show up for work the next day at 5pm. Arriving a half-hour early only to learn he’d lose the job if he didn’t find a belt to wear, DeLeon dashed to his sister’s to borrow a frilly ribbon number two-sizes too small, thus avoiding getting fired before he had even started.

Listening to DeLeon now, it is easy to downplay the significance of this little interlude. But if you’re a kid just getting out of school, you might want to take note. DeLeon was able to get his foothold in the industry that has made him highly successful by building up a portfolio of relevant experience, in this case delivering papers. When he got the opportunity to get in the next door, he didn’t let it slip by and instead scrambled to find a belt, however ridiculous it might have made him look that first day. He did whatever it took to get started.

Find the Joy in Pleasing Customers

DeLeon credits much of his success to his parents whom he described as his “biggest role models.” When DeLeon was in elementary school, his “blue-collar parents used to buy clothing wholesale and sell it at work or to friends.” He took note of the relationships they built with their friends and customers and tried to do the same when he started delivering pizzas. He paid attention to the smallest details, even how to park unobtrusively in driveways and how to ring doorbells to the customer’s liking.

When cellphones came along, DeLeon used them to improve the delivery experience, calling when no one answered the door. It wasn’t long before he’d get calls directly, saying “hey are you working today, we want to order pizza.” Like his parents, DeLeon was building strong ties with each of his customers, ties that distinguished him from his peers. At the same time, DeLeon found joy in pleasing customers, noting with pride, “it became a high for me, the excitement, the doorbell, the kids jumping and shouting ‘the pizza guy’s here!’”

Learn to Make the Pizza

After delivering pizza with aplomb for three years, his manager asked DeLeon to arrive early and open up the store since the shift manager was going to be late. Think Lou Gehrig filling in at first base for headache-pained Wally Pipp except for one key fact, metaphorically DeLeon didn’t know how to hit or catch. When the phone started ringing and orders arriving, DeLeon and another driver had no idea how to make a pizza but somehow they did just that.

When the manager did arrive, DeLeon exclaimed, “I don’t want to be in that situation again!” Taking time before and after his delivery shifts, DeLeon learned how to make the pizza and everything else the store sold. Shortly thereafter Domino’s asked DeLeon to join their management-training program. The lesson here for any of you starting out is clear–learn the business of the business even if it isn’t your primary job. In this way, when opportunity strikes, you’ll be able to jump in like DeLeon and Gehrig, relegating the Wally Pipp’s of the world to mere footnotes.

Take the Low Performing Store

Paying his dues as an assistant manager, DeLeon was working at one of the highest volume stores in Chicago when a manager spot opened up at an underperforming location. According to DeLeon, “there were other people more qualified to take over that store but no one wanted it.” Asked why he would want such a dog, DeLeon gamely offered, “When stuff is that low, the only thing you can do is look up.” Not surprisingly, DeLeon’s willingness to take on the bigger challenge paid off.

On the first day of the job, DeLeon somewhat brashly told his District Manager that his store was going to be off the underperformers list by the end of the week, even if that meant he had to buy the pizza himself. Knowing that he couldn’t transform the store alone, DeLeon “rounded up the right people who wanted to stay and let the others go who didn’t.” Having established his business goal and then put his team in place, DeLeon started a series of guerrilla marketing activities that helped his store set a nation wide Domino’s record for most consecutive weeks of sales growth.

Final Note: Ramon DeLeon did not have the advantage of an Ivy League education or social connections that would give him a head start. On the contrary, he started out at the proverbial bottom of the barrel, delivering pizzas on a part-time basis to pay for school. How he became a pioneering practitioner of social media is all the more remarkable and part 2 of this series (to follow later this week). This article first appeared on FastCompany.com.