Too Many Russians Got Domino’s Tattoos for Free Pizza

What would you do for 100 free pizzas every year for 100 years? Quick clarification: They’re all Domino’s pizzas. Even with that qualifier, 100 free pizzas for essentially the rest of your life is a hell of a deal for anyone who is not on a low-carb diet, so it’s no surprise that when Domino’s Pizza offered that exact opportunity in Russia, people reportedly went a bit crazy… even though to score the deal, they had to get a real Domino’s tattoo.

On August 31, Domino’s Pizza Russia posted a message to the Russian social media site VKontakte stating that the brand was “launching an unprecedented campaign.” According to The Moscow Times (whose understanding of Russian is better than ours), the campaign offered up to 100 free Domino’s pizzas per year over the next 100 years to anyone willing to get a real tattoo of the Domino’s logo “in a prominent place” and then post an image of their tattoo on Instagram, Facebook, or VKontakte. The brand wrote that “the authenticity of the tattoos will be checked,” but outside of that, the terms seemed relatively straightforward.

As silly as it might sound, a lot of Russians were apparently willing to turn themselves into Domino’s billboards. The Moscow Times found nearly a dozen examples on Instagram alone which you can see below.

In the end, even Domino’s came across as a bit surprised by how successful the campaign was. By September 4, the company announced on VKontakte—via an image of a giant stop sign—that they were looking to cut things off after 350 participants and, as a result, would be shutting the offer down that day at noon… despite the fact that the original proposed end date was months away, October 31.

“An urgent message to all those sitting at the tattoo artist’s right now: We’ll include you in the list of participants, but we’re waiting for photos up to midday today,” the message said according to a Moscow Times’ translation. “To those with appointments scheduled for later, we recommend canceling them.”

Of course, Russians and authenticity on social media don’t have the greatest track record right now, so the website Munchies began to wonder about just how real this whole campaign was. They reached out to Domino’s in America who told them that “this program is being run by our master franchisee for Russia,” and that they’d try to get them in touch with the Russians. (We’ve heard that line before!) Yes, that statement doesn’t necessarily provide us with any additional information about the campaign, but it would at least seem to insinuate that this whole thing was, in fact, real.