Dodo Pizza’s communication architecture

Brand evolution and corporate platform

The modern global foodservice market, particularly the highly competitive fast-food and food delivery sector, is undergoing a transformation. In an environment where consumers are overwhelmed with information, traditional marketing tools based on the one-way dissemination of advertising messages are losing their effectiveness. In this context, the communication model of Dodo Pizza is particularly valuable. Founded in 2011 in Syktyvkar by entrepreneur Fyodor Ovchinnikov, the company has made the leap from a local regional pizzeria to an international technology-driven chain. As of late 2024 — early 2025, the brand comprises 1,471 outlets across dozens of countries worldwide, generating global revenue in excess of 140.5 billion roubles.

The secret to this kind of scaling lies not only in an innovative business model and proprietary cloud-based IT infrastructure, but also in a robust brand platform that is inextricably linked to the corporate culture and a fundamentally new approach to communication.

The company’s positioning is set out in its official manifesto and mission statement. The brand positions itself as an agent of positive social change. The official brand book states:

‘We create high-quality products. We make delicious pizza, build comfortable pizzerias and develop user-friendly apps. In this way, we improve people’s quality of life, and they become more discerning.’

The company’s mission sounds ambitious:

‘To foster a culture of openness and improve people’s quality of life, so that the world is filled with more caring and proactive creators.’

The values underpinning our communication are built on five key pillars that run through all our brand communications:

Accessibility Ensuring the product, interfaces and physical environment are accessible to all

Responsiveness An empathetic approach to solving user problems

Trust Delivering consistently high quality worldwide, transforming the brand into a ‘safe haven’ for consumers

Openness Total transparency of processes, blurring the boundaries between the corporation and the customer

Quality Flawless products and services as a minimum standard

Teenagers (12–17 years) Emotions and trends. They order on impulse, seeking not just food but also status and entertainment on a limited budget. Best tools: collaborations with games, merchandise, interactive features and eye-catching new products.

Young adults and students (18–25 years old) Speed and value. The most active segment, ordering for groups (study sessions, parties). They are wary of overpaying and long waiting times. Best tools: dynamic promotions, combo sets, promo codes, gamification and the option to split the bill.

Families with children (26–40 years old) Comfort and safety. The most stable segment. They order for family get-togethers, worry about the ingredients and how to please everyone. Best tools: family combos, pizzas with different toppings on each half, an emphasis on natural ingredients, a children’s menu and playrooms.

Offices and teams (aged 25–45) Pragmatism and punctuality. For them, pizza is a tool for corporate events or late-night work sessions. The person placing the order is afraid of making the wrong choice or receiving the order late. Best tools: volume discounts, corporate programmes, rock-solid logistics and easy reordering of previous orders.

Customers aged 45+ Conservatism and service. A potentially very loyal segment that is wary of complex digital interfaces. Best tools: the simplest possible ordering process, consistently high-quality food and polite customer service.

The company’s ecosystem of communication channels is a complex system in which physical spaces, digital products and media platforms function as a single entity. The brand fundamentally departs from the traditional view of advertising as a standalone tool, integrating its PR strategy directly into its day-to-day operations.

Physical space as a medium

The architecture and design of pizzerias serve as the primary channel of communication. Depending on the context of consumption, the company develops different formats for its establishments. The urban format is geared towards high footfall, quick bites on the go, and integration into the rhythm of city life. The family format, by contrast, features children’s play areas, encouraging guests to linger, socialise and perceive the pizzeria as a ‘third place’ between home and work. Packaging design, staff uniforms and insulated delivery bags are all governed by guidelines and serve as consistent carriers of the brand’s visual style and tone.

Digital ecosystem: Dodo App

The mobile app is a powerful PR channel and a tool for building long-term relationships. The interface incorporates features that convey the brand’s values:

Total customisation Users can remove ingredients they don’t like, create their own combinations and make a pizza with two different halves. This is the physical embodiment of the value of ‘Responsiveness’.

Loyalty programme Built not only around discounts, but also around gamified ‘missions’, cashback and personalised offers.

In-app content marketing Using the Stories format within the app to communicate editorial content, product stories and corporate news.

Gamification and youth subcultures

The brand actively uses gamification to engage its audience. As part of its expansion into the geek, gamer and pop culture fan communities, the company is launching large-scale collaborations. A prime example is the ‘Dodo Pizza x Genshin Impact 2024’ campaign, which has won professional awards in the categories of gaming, food and partnerships with media channels. Such campaigns generate explosive viral reach and an immediate economic impact.

A PR strategy of radical transparency

Whilst traditional PR focuses on managing reputation by concealing flaws, the brand uses transparency as its main weapon.

For example, in countries where it does not contravene the law, every kitchen is equipped with cameras. The cooking process is streamed in real time to the website and the app. This replaces any advertising claims about cleanliness and quality with irrefutable visual evidence. The revenue of the entire network is published in real time and is freely accessible. Every Monday, the company holds open video broadcasts of management meetings, available to anyone who wishes to watch. At these meetings, not only successes but also corporate failures are discussed. The company’s brand book and design system are themselves publicly available. Any competitor can access and read internal guides on social media marketing, retouching, photography or menu development.

Tone of Voice

The brand’s guiding principle is ‘Truth’. In communications, it is strictly forbidden to use boastfulness, sarcasm, arrogance, archaic language, bureaucratic or dry language, to promise unrealistic ‘wow moments’, or to conceal mistakes.

Instead, the brand should sound like a ‘good old friend’: emotional, witty, modern, open and straightforward. This tone is applied everywhere: from responses to negative reviews in local public groups to global adverts. The brand isn’t afraid to admit its ‘blunders’, publicly addressing the negative feedback, which turns critics into brand advocates.

The Dialogic Theory of Public Relations (Kent and Taylor)

Classical PR theories often view communication as a one-way process of mass control. However, in the late 1980s, Ron Pearson, drawing on the philosophy of Martin Buber and Jürgen Habermas’s theory of communicative action, argued that ethical PR must be based on genuine dialogue. Between 1998 and 2002, researchers Michael Kent and Maureen Taylor transformed these philosophical ideas into a structured Dialogical Theory of PR, adapting it for the digital and web environments as well. Dialogue here is understood not merely as an exchange of remarks, but as a fundamental 'orientation' of the organization, implying sincerity, humility, and a willingness to change under the influence of the audience.

Kent and Taylor identified five key principles of dialogical orientation:

Mutuality The recognition that the organization and the public are inextricably linked. This is a collaborative approach in which the company understands that its legitimacy stems solely from the trust of its audience.

Propinquity Spatial and temporal engagement. The organization’s willingness to communicate in real time, spontaneously, and to consult with the public before making important decisions.

Empathy Supporting and affirming consumers’ goals. The organization must demonstrate that it understands people’s needs, empathizes with them, and shares community values.

Risk A key element implying the company’s willingness to be vulnerable. By entering into a genuine dialogue, the organization loses complete control over the narrative, risks public criticism, or faces the need to radically change internal processes.

Commitment The degree to which a company is willing to invest resources in maintaining dialogue and achieving mutual understanding, rather than simply in generating short-term profit.

For digital platforms, Kent and Taylor developed the concept of the 'Dialogic Loop'. A website or app must provide a simple interface, useful information, the ability to easily submit a request, and the guarantee of receiving a substantive response, encouraging the user to return again and again.

The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)

The ELM, developed by Richard Petty and John Cacioppo in the 1980s, explains how the process of persuasion and attitude change occurs. The model posits the existence of two information processing routes:

Central Route Activated when the consumer is highly motivated and capable of analyzing information. Persuasion occurs through logical arguments, facts, and quality characteristics. This route produces the most enduring changes in attitude toward the brand.

Peripheral Route When motivation is low or time is limited. The user relies on superficial stimuli: design appeal, humor, game mechanics, the status of partners, or the opinions of authorities.

Mechanism 1: Risk + Central Path Instead of hiding flaws, the brand shows everything — like live webcams in kitchens. This builds deep trust with motivated customers (e.g., parents concerned about food safety). Transparency becomes a strong, rational reason to believe in the brand.

Mechanism 2: Dialogue + Peripheral Path For less engaged users (like teens), the brand uses fun elements — a Tamagotchi-style pet in the app, AR masks, and game bonuses. These keep users coming back emotionally, not logically. When they get hungry, the brand is top of mind.

Mechanism 3: Mutuality & Shared Control Users can build their own pizza, remove ingredients, and give feedback that actually affects ratings. This makes people feel heard and valued, turning a simple transaction into a real partnership.

Mechanism 4: Empathy & Tone of Voice The brand avoids cold, corporate language. It admits mistakes openly and communicates politely. A real example: employees caring for a stray dog (Dodoboni) went viral — showing the brand is run by kind, relatable people.

Mechanism 5: Spontaneity Real-time order tracking ('your pizza is in the oven') and fast reactions to memes or news make the brand feel present and human — no slow, official statements.

Assessment of the Current State

The strategies chosen by the company don’t just work—they create an insurmountable barrier for competitors.

Trust converted into numbers Investments in openness (webcams, data transparency) have enabled a radical reduction in customer acquisition cost (CAC) and an increase in lifetime value (LTV). Users acquired through the ELM Central Path demonstrate low churn rates.

Digital expansion The app successfully retains its audience by driving repeat visits through the Dialogic Loop (gamification, loyalty program).

Positioning Shift The brand has successfully moved beyond being perceived as just a fast-food chain, carving out a niche as a socially responsible IT company that improves quality of life (which is fully in line with its stated manifesto).

Potential Vulnerabilities

Nevertheless, the chosen framework identifies a number of strategic threats:

Hyper-vulnerability risk The dialogical principle of Risk means that any failures become public instantly. The slightest violation of health regulations caught on public cameras could trigger a viral reputational crisis.

Erosion of Tone of Voice as the business scales As the number of locations grows (nearly 1,500) and the company expands into MENA (Middle East) markets, maintaining a 'down-to-earth', empathetic tone becomes exponentially more difficult. There is a risk of slipping into algorithmic, soulless support responses, which would undermine the principle of Reciprocity.

Cultural barriers A strategy of directness and openness to discussing mistakes fits perfectly with Western and post-Soviet mentalities, but may clash with the cultural norms of Asian or Middle Eastern countries, where the 'saving face' paradigm dominates.

Recommendations for Improving Communication

Based on Dialogic Public Relations Theory and the ELM model, the following strategic recommendations can be proposed:

Cultural Glocalization of the Empathy Principle When expanding into new markets, a brand must adapt its tone of voice. While maintaining the global concept of openness, the level of wit and directness must be calibrated to local norms of politeness so that the principle of empathy is not perceived as cultural expansion or arrogance.

Integration of Predictive Dialogue To strengthen the ELM Central Path, the brand should implement predictive analytics algorithms into its mobile app. If the app begins to anticipate the customer’s needs (for example, by automatically suggesting that a B2B client repeat last year’s corporate event order, taking into account changed prices), this will take the principle of Reciprocity to a new technological level, saving the consumer’s cognitive resources.

Developing Open Crisis Management Protocols Given the risks of hyper-transparency, companies need to systematize their crisis PR. When public issues arise, the brand should not go into defensive mode. On the contrary, the crisis should be used as a trigger to strengthen dialogue: publicly investigate incidents and demonstrate the process of correcting mistakes in real time. This transforms potential negativity into powerful evidence of the Risk (vulnerability) principle, further engaging the audience.

Deepening social responsibility (Commitment) To solidify the brand’s leadership, it is recommended to develop communication around the ESG agenda (environment, social responsibility). Broadcasting packaging recycling processes, initiatives to reduce the carbon footprint, and support for local communities (similar to Patagonia) will strengthen the impact on a highly conscious audience, creating deep meaningful connections through the ELM Central Path of Persuasion.

Implementing these recommendations will allow the brand not only to maintain its current competitive advantages but also to elevate its dialogue-based communication architecture to a level unattainable for traditional QSR chains.