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Bret Thorn
ANN ARBOR Mich. Domino’s Pizza Inc. has turned to employees in its accounting and research & development departments to star in a new television advertisement promoting the $5.99 BreadBowl Pastas and the new chocolate lava crunch cake that comes free with each pasta order.
In the commercial, staff from the two departments argue about who gets more credit for the offer, the chefs who developed the menu items or the accountants who set the price.
“A culinary miracle, a mathematical phenomenon,” the commercial concludes.
The lowered price and dessert offer are available through September 13.
The commercial is the latest in a series of ads featuring Domino’s employees. The first featured chief executive Dave Brandon burning a cease-and-desist letter from Subway over the pizza chain’s baked sandwiches. Subsequent commercials featured staff and franchisees in feuds over the chain’s American Legends specialty pizza line, which features flavors from different parts of the country, including Philly cheese steak and Memphis barbecue chicken.
Shortly after the pasta bowl advertisement began airing, the consumer advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest attacked the BreadBowl Pastas, calling them “the most recent food porn.” It described the Alfredo sauce in which three of the five pastas are dressed as “infamous,” and, noting that an order of BreadBowl pasta contains between 1,300 and 1,500 calories, said, “Most people wouldn’t consider eating an entire medium hand-tossed cheese pizza from Domino’s in one sitting.”
Domino’s spokesman Tim McIntyre said that a BreadBowl pasta, like a pizza, was intended to feed more than one person. He pointed out that the chain’s web site says one serving is half a bread bowl.
He said the CSPI skewed the facts.
“They took two servings and assumed that Americans would eat the whole thing. Well, we don’t assume that,” he said.
Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected].
