Sunday, April 5, 2009

11,000 free pizzas?


It seems that Domino's Pizza has egg pizza on its face.

"Bailout" was the magic word as Domino's had to give away thousands of free pizzas because someone stumbled on an online promotion the company scrapped.

Domino's Pizza Inc. spokesman Tim McIntyre said Wednesday that the company prepared an Internet coupon for an ad campaign that was considered in December but not approved.

He says someone apparently typed "bailout" into a Domino's promo code window and found it was good for a free medium pizza.

Word about the code spread quickly Monday night on the Web and 11,000 free pizzas were delivered before it was deactivated Tuesday morning.

Cincinnati-area franchise owner John Glass says his 14 stores gave away more than 600 pies, but that Domino's promised to reimburse him.


I'd love to know how that code word got out there. Was it a worker at one of the advertising agencies for the promo, disgruntled at not getting the business, and wanting revenge? Was it sheer chance that made someone try words at random, hoping to strike it lucky?

Peter

2 comments:

Mad Saint Jack said...

Heh.

I worked for John Glass.

They made me pick between the job or the beard...I picked the beard.

WV: pumrahne

word verification really hates me.

Don said...

If you search for promo codes and coupons, there's a glut of information. I'm sure there are people out there trying out likely words. Maybe even software. It would be no different than the old days of access cracking when they would brute-crack password protection by trying millions of password combinations, except that the promo words are more predictable.