Scalable Intimacy

Branding in the age of social media.

Sometimes “Measurement” Drives Bad Brand Decisions

Posted on | July 22, 2009 | Comments

Pizza Hut just launched an app some have argued is the best commercial app so far.  It’s got everything you could ever want and more:

This little gem stands in sharp contrast to another app which caught a lot of attention lately, namely Dunkin‘ Donuts’ comparatively humble Dunkin’ Run app as covered by Jedi Master Chris Brogan a while ago…

Dunkin Run UI

Dunkin Run UI

So which is better?

Well, for those who worship at the alter of “Engagement,” clearly the Pizza Hut app. It seems takes advantage of every possible nook and cranny of the iPhone SDK to turn something as mundane as ordering wings into an interactive arcade experience. It includes a racing game, for chrissakes. How could you be more engaged? You could spend the evening with this thing.

All the Dunkin’ Donuts app does is help you buy more coffee for other people. It’s not shiny. Shaking it does nothing. Tilting it, same. It lacks a racing game of any kind. All it does is solve a problem you actually have.

I think the Dunkin’ Donuts app is HANDS DOWN the better app, in large part because I continue to believe that engagement is bullshit.

What do you think?

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Category: Advertising, Branding, Case Studies, Web 2.0 Gurus
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Comments

  • The only point I had was in ordering in a foreign country I certainly would appreciate the app, living in Egypt since 6 years and after ordering on the phone w/o Olives countless times AND speaking fairly decent Arabic, I still get Olives in my pizza ;)

    To those who scoff when in a foreign country eat the local food, we'll sometimes you just don't want to ;)
  • That's an excellent point, Roger. An icon rather than text-driven interface makes the app global, right out of the gate. If that was a key objective, it meets it.

    Still... I wonder what repeat use for this will be among users as a whole, the vast majority of which are probably US English natives. Still convinced that something simpler would have generated more revenue overall.
  • Having watched the vid now (there was an error before) I see your point is about the unnecessary complexity not whether the app in itself is a good idea...

    Point taken...Dev time would be better spent in improving the apps worldwide use ie. multi language maybe, local store Db for countries w/o GPS rather than on 'games' ;)
  • I think that olives are mandatory in any Mediterranean country. I can't seem to get a pizza without them in France or Spain either when I travel there.

    ;)
  • I think it depends on the brand's goals. From a creating an app with the goal to bring people in store and to get more purchases out of them standpoint? Dunkin Run.

    But I look at CPG brand like Charmin. No app alive would get me to buy more toilet paper. I downloaded and use Sit or Squat though. It's level of utility is amazing to me. And, sorry, it's engaging.

    So my take is that it's not an either or proposition. I think it depends on your goals and your brand and how they work together.

    I have not used the Hut app so I can't weigh in on that one.
  • OK. The Pizza Hut app has to be the stupidest thing I've ever seen (and I'm staying away from the gaps in interaction metaphor and usability). I want to order Pizza, not play a game. If I wanted to play a game, I'd play a game. Isn't the goal of interactive to reduce complexity and more specifically the number of obstacles keeping your customer from buying your product? Meanwhile DD (who I am still hoping will show up one day in California, but I digress) go exactly the opposite. They find a way to make it really easy to spend MORE money by tapping your social network, doing something you'd probably already do anyway.

    The only engagement that counts is taking money from your customer. Easiest to measure too.
  • thanks- very informative. I'll be checking out these apps.
  • stevepoppe
    If the Pizza Hut app helps order pizza, that's okay. But if the app is smothered in toppings one might lose sight of that utility. Engagement needs to be channeled and meaningful and on the brand strategy. I'm with you Mr. Troiano, a coffee run is much better "branded utility" (Benjamin Palmer, Barbarian Group?) than is a pizza game. And it's proof that "America's runnin' on Dunkin'."
  • This kind of reminds me of the branded widgets from three years ago. I wonder how many folks are sill using the Pizza hut Widget and what the ROI was on that one: http://ow.ly/ii54

    There is a gold rush of sort with the iPhone apps but they really have to be stellar in order for them not to get bumped off of the screen. There is precious little screen room and in order to remain you have to be pretty darn handy and have great usability.

    I will add this is advertising and if the app cost say 20-30k to develop and the word of mouth buzz is for say two or three weeks tops then it's cheaper than a national TV spend. Not saying that that is a good way to go but it can be justified by the teams that the goals were met.

    Then there is the buzz for 2.0 when it's rebranded with Pizza Huts new logo etc. Via @idsgn http://ow.ly/ii8M
  • I don't necessarily disagree with you, but what does any of that have to do with measurement?
  • Most efforts to measure the value of social marketing focus on "engagement," which appears to have been a primary objective of the Pizza Hut app. I'm making an inference here, obviously, but it seems a safe one.

    The focus on "engagement" in that app seems to me to have interfered with the apps ability to deliver *real* business value - incremental sales in the form of enhanced order frequency, for example, or increases in average order value, as the Dunkin Donuts app is intended to do.

    My point - and I should have been more clear on this - is that engagement is a proxy for value. It is a means to an end, not an end unto itself. Focus too much on that, and you miss what really matters in your social marketing effort, which as with all marketing programs is to drive incremental revenue.

    More here.
  • I like the post and the discussion, but the title is misleading... perhaps a more accurate one would be "Measuring the wrong thing can lead to the wrong decision" If Pizza Hut was measuring more than engagement then perhaps it would have lead them to a better use of developer $...
  • Good point. Thanks for stopping by.
  • bcavanaugh
    Both of these examples are entertainment or as I like to say "appletainment" posing as engagement, so I hate to give up on engagement entirely until I see a true example of it. Yeah, nay?
  • You're right not to give up on it entirely. I wouldn't be so strongly dismissive of engagement if others weren't so overly obsessed with it. Truth is somewhere in between.
  • brilliantvideo
    Engagement is BS, and wouldn't it be nice if a good restaurant came up with this app instead of Pizza yuck. I am off to dunks now anyone need anything?
  • JaniceYang
    The Dunkin’ Donuts app is simply great!!!Though there is some contrast between Pizza hut and Dunkin’ Donuts apps,but still it solves the problem you actually have.Can't say much about Pizza hut apps but would love to read more on that!!!!thanks for sharing the information and keep up the good job!!!!

    Just stumbled and submitted your site to http://Viralogy.com Hope you get some great traffic from it. Your blog is here http://www.viralogy.com/blogs/my/694
    Janice
  • good quick article on difference between engagement and filling a 'need'. It's the need that drives real engagement.
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