rape and racism and canadian bacon and extra cheese

i read a lot online, but mostly just news and lists off cracked…

…the latter of which are predominantly really good. and every now and then i read a topic and wonder if it’s really list worthy, and boy was i surprised by the “ten of the wildest domino’s pizza controversies”. i figure something “noid related”, and maybe a bit about how the whole “thirty minutes or less” thing had to go away for public safety reasons.

surprisingly nothing about the latter and the former was about a guy who actually had the last name “noid”, lost his shit, thought it was a personal attack, and ran up then there with a pistol. but scattered amongst the disgusting stuff about rodents and other atrocities were two marketing blunders that really surprised me. there are focus groups. board presentations. meetings upon meetings upon meetings before an international corporation launches an ad campaign. so how the hell did these two slip through the cracks? in this day and age, where there are actually job titles like “inclusion officer” and “diversity specialist” did such tone deaf shit leak out?

case in point, the one that slipped by the goalie in the u.k. during the heart of the pandemic. this should have been their time to shine. while other eateries struggled to adapt their business model to people eating restaurant food at home, and getting their food to said homes, domino’s had that business model already – no need to adapt! they started the game already on third, they just needed to walk it home.

keep in mind, there was a lot of anti-asian sentiment during the early days of covid due to it appearing the virus started in china. so when three women in a uk advert for domino’s were trying to decide what they wanted to eat, and one of them practically yells out, “anything but CHINESE”, it was taken as a bit insulting.

likewise, over a decade ago they launched a line of “chef curated” (name me a chef that’s not named “gordon or “guy” or that new orleans dude – go ahead…i’ll wait) artisan pizzas that, unlike their ‘normal’ options, weren’t customizable.

the ad copy:

The one thing they don’t come with? The option to add different toppings. Why? Our chefs created each of our four Artisan pizzas with the ideal combination of ingredients to produce the most distinctive, delicious flavors possible. It’s not easy for us to say “no.” But, we’re doing it for all the right reasons.

and the tagline? “no is the new yes”. yeah, we’ll just leave that right there…