PROFILE: Chris Moore, Marketing director. Domino’s Pizza - Faster food

Of all the entrepreneurs, paper millionaires and media moguls

revelling in the birth of the digital age, it is hard to believe anyone

is enjoying themselves quite as much as Chris Moore, 40, marketing

director of Domino’s Pizza.

’The whole thing is all ’fire, ready, aim’ and I love it,’ he

enthuses.

As unlikely as it might have seemed only two years ago, Moore and his

pizza delivery company - perhaps best known for its fleet of wobbly

mopeds - have become British new media pioneers.

’We approached Sky when it launched digital TV and said we wanted to be

the first company on their interactive service. We signed the deal

almost immediately and had a system in all 95 stores inside of seven

weeks.’

Deals with digital operators Open, Telewest and Cable & Wireless

followed.

Moore is zealous about having a presence on all the new media channels

and being first. ’You can’t measure the value of being first. We are

getting experience, customer awareness and plain good deals from media

providers because we are moving quickly.’

Domino’s web-based pizza ordering service is the only one of its kind in

the UK and Moore has spent much of the past few weeks signing WAP mobile

phone deals that will see the company’s web site address programmed into

phones prior to them leaving the stores.

The new economy is also throwing up business opportunities beyond

pizza.

Last month, Domino’s signed a deal to deliver computer games - and a

pizza, of course - on behalf of computer game retailer Gameplay.

Announcement of the deal led to a host of approaches from third-party

companies and Moore admits that such logistics -based transactions could

change the nature of his business: ’It was a breakthrough for us but

pizza is still what we are about - for the time being at least.’

It is a sense of urgency, which parallels the new economy, as much as

business opportunities, that stir Moore - ’I can’t stand working and not

seeing results.’ Patience is not one of his virtues, a trait he blames

on a Latin business background and attitude that belies his very English

appearance.

Born and raised in Bath, Moore left England at the age of 17 to live

with his parents in Rio de Janeiro, where his father, an engineer, was

teaching the local Navy to use British weapons systems.

After a crash course in Portuguese, Moore’s career stuttered between

passing flings as a restaurateur - ’I got out when the local Mafia told

me it was the business or my knee caps’ - and a rock promoter - ’Lost

all my money on the first show’.

His fast food break came in 1981 when he joined McCann-Erickson Brazil

to work on the McDonald’s account. ’At that time in Brazil, businesses

weren’t thinking long-term. Inflation was running at 1000%, so the

important thing, even for a company such as McDonald’s, was to get money

in and get it into the bank.

’We would do whole ad campaigns, conception to TV, in two weeks. Client

meetings were smoky, caffeine-fuelled and full of arguments - but work

got done. That is how I learned to do business and I still can’t stand

doing deals over months.’

Thirteen years after leaving Rio to return to the UK, Moore’s links to

Brazil are as strong as ever. He has a Brazilian wife with whom he has

three young kids and he holidays in Rio at least once a year. ’I

returned to Britain in 1987 with McCanns under the notion that London

was the centre of the advertising universe. That was my first mistake,’

he laments. ’My second was moving to Lintas in 1989 to work on Unilever.

I was there for a year and I think we did one poster. The pace drove me

insane.’

Frustrated, Moore leapt at a job offer from Domino’s Pizza UK, where he

was appointed European marketing manager of the infant delivery

chain.

’When I first joined, we were very much a local pizza brand. Over time,

we built outlets and planned our regional strategies, but in the end we

made the jump from local to national brand fairly seamlessly,’ he

says.

This leap is firmly attributed to ad agency Booth Lockett Makin, which

in 1998 engineered Domino’s massively successful sponsorship of The

Simpsons on Sky.

’Our brand awareness went from 65% to 81% in one year. We weren’t

advertising, so we know exactly what to blame,’ he says.

The success of the sponsorship freed Moore from brand-building duties

and let him pursue the new media opportunities that now dominate

Domino’s horizon.

As Steve Booth, managing partner at Booth Lockett Makin, says: ’Moore

has an eye for the future and an appreciation for new economy

opportunities far ahead of any other client.’

Moore himself is just having a ball: ’There is a real buzz - it’s

business just the way I like it.’

BIOGRAPHY

1981-1984: Account director, Caio Domingues (Brazil)

1984-1987: Account director, McDonald’s, McCann-Erickson Brazil

1987-1989: Account director, Esso, McCann-Erickson London

1989-1990: Senior account director, Unilever, Lintas

1990-1998: Marketing manager, Domino’s Pizza UK

1998-present: Marketing director, Domino’s Pizza UK.

This article was first published on Marketing