Profiting from Honesty

It's hard enough to admit you're wrong to someone in private but to do that in a very public way, criticizing the quality that your brand has stood for in the past would seem to be a very bold move.  This is exactly what Dominoes Pizza did when they launched their Pizza Turnaround campaign, effectively admiting that their pizza was substandard and that they were completely overhauling the recipes of their pizzas. 

The campaign took me and a lot of other people by surprise--that  a company as big as Dominoes would do this was unprecedented.  It showed that they care about the customer reviews that they get, and that they are not so big an organization that they don't care about the basics of having a tasty pizza.  It has given them a percpetion a personal company with faces of their employees and customers representing who they are. 

Personally, I don't remember how their pizza used to taste, but I know how their pizza tastes now, and I think it tastes good (though my taste buds are not particularly refined).  I'm guessing that they gained just as many new customers who were impressed by their honesty as they did get people who had previously tried their pizza and were turned off.

At the same time, I'm mixed about this campaign because it feels a little manipulative, and maybe their emphasis that "we are admitting to being wrong" was too strong--as if we should be impressed that they would do the right thing.  Do I believe that Dominoes' management just did this to get it off their chest? -- no.  Their main goal is still to sell pizza and make money, and it just happens that this is the best campaign to do that.  However, if nothing else, this campaign shows a strong enough confidence in your new pizza recipes that you believe it will satisfy people who are more critical than normal coming to try your pizza. 

Although the campaign may be more motivated by business savvy than authentic humility, it still strikes a chord with audiences and stands out in a very ad-saturated market.