Domino’s built its brand in Delivery, and earned a reputation as a technology company with innovative digital ideas like emoji and Twitter ordering. In 2018 the goal was different: grow carryout share. “Paving for Pizza” encouraged consumers to report their neighborhood’s faulty roads, so Domino’s could repair them to help ensure pizzas get to consumers intact. Customers submitted over 194,066 paving nominations from 17,198 ZIP codes; even municipal governments and community groups encouraged citizens to participate. Domino’s has paved roads in 13 cities, and expanded the program to pave in at least one community in each of the 50 states.

Domino’s requested a 360 campaign to advertise their Weeklong Carryout Special. To motivate carryout consumers, we had to uncover what is special or different about their experience, versus delivery. Our research revealed an interesting insight: carryout customers expressed a need to exercise control over their pizza experience. They carry out to ensure the order is right, hot, and home in the shortest amount of time. It seemed the most stressful roadblock to getting pizza home safely is a rough ride.

As the world’s number one pizza company, Domino’s will go to great lengths for the love of pizza. That’s why Domino’s tackled what no pizza brand—or any other type of brand, for that matter—would think to do: fix the nation’s roads. We realized that almost all carryout customers share an unexpected archnemesis: bad roads that can ruin good pizza when it bumps around in the carryout box on the drive home. So, with Paving for Pizza, Domino’s committed to paving potholes and fixing roads in all 50 states, in order for those customers to be guaranteed a smoother ride home for their pizzas, no matter where they live.

We took a step back to look at the cultural context of the moment: domestic issues like infrastructure were going unaddressed. Customers carry out their pizza because they crave total control, end to end, in their experience. Proving we understand and empathize with these customers was key to reaching them. By combining the cultural tension around infrastructure with the consumer insight on control, the creative concept of paving roads, to ensure a safer ride for pizza, was born.

We cold-called 1,300 county governments, offering them donations for paving, and learned that free money is surprisingly hard to give away. Ultimately, we secured a partner city (Bartonville, Texas) to serve as a prototype for the project, which allowed proof of concept to other potential city governments. We paved three cities before National Television started and paving submissions started rolling in through the microsite.

Show, don’t tell, was our motto. On June 11, we unveiled the campaign by announcing that Domino’s had filled potholes in Bartonville, Texas; Milford, Delaware; Athens, Georgia; and Burbank, California, and asked consumers to help Domino’s decide where to go next.

Outreach efforts included conversations with national consumer outlets and stimulating organic conversation on social media. When a town was awarded a paving grant, they also received a branded asset kit—and Domino’s gift cards to feed the crew—which further promoted the campaign.

After seeing a large number of local governments nominating their towns for paving, we recognized an opportunity to sustain the campaign. On August 28, Domino’s announced that it would be coming to one town in each of the 50 states during the next year. The announcement itself received another windfall of coverage and ensures continued media coverage each time a new city receives a grant.

The day after launch, Paving for Pizza was upvoted to the #1 post on Reddit.com, and the following day, a trending story on LinkedIn. In the first week, the campaign garnered 35,000 organic social media mentions. And within a month, it became a national sensation, garnering more than a billion earned media impressions with coverage across top-tier national media, including USA Today, NBC’s “Today” show, “The Late Late Show with James Corden,” Bloomberg, and the Washington Post. And each time a paving grant went before a city council, and then on Paving Day itself, the campaign received an onslaught of local broadcast and print coverage.

Most importantly, the campaign inspired direct consumer response. At the end of the submission period, the microsite had garnered over 194,066 unique submissions from 17,198 different ZIP codes in all 50 states.