Domino's admitted on camera that its pizza tasted bad, then changed the recipe

Domino's domestic same-store sales fell through 2008 — down 6.1% in the third quarter and 5.6% over the first nine months, a decline the company's own SEC filing attributed to a weak consumer environment and strong competition, on top of years of internal surveys and focus groups telling the company its pizza itself, not just the market, was the problem.

Rather than defend the product, in December 2009 Domino's launched a campaign built entirely around that criticism: television ads showed real customers describing the crust as tasting like cardboard and the sauce like ketchup, followed by Domino's chefs and executives admitting the criticism was fair and describing a from-scratch reformulation of the dough, sauce and cheese. The new recipe rolled out nationwide the same month the ads aired, so the marketing and the product change landed together.

The bet was that owning the worst thing said about you is more credible than answering it. It required the company to have an actual reformulated product ready before running a single ad — a campaign admitting the pizza was bad, with no better pizza behind it, would have just amplified the complaint.

Domino's admitted on camera that its pizza tasted bad, then changed the recipe, and same-store sales rose 14.3% in Q1 2010, its best since IPO.

Admitting the specific, quotable criticism made the announcement credible in a way a generic 'new and improved' claim could not — viewers recognized complaints they had made or heard themselves.

The campaign only worked because the product change was real and already in stores; the honesty was a claim the company could back up the day a customer ordered.

Turning the worst reviews into the ad copy pre-empted competitors and critics from using those same lines against the relaunch — Domino's had already said it first.

When the product itself is the complaint, admit the specific criticism in public before selling the fix — but only once the fix is real and already shipping.

Domino's domestic same-store sales grew 14.3% in the first quarter of 2010 over the prior year — the largest quarterly increase since the company's 2004 IPO, per its SEC filing — and stayed up double digits through the year. The stock, which had traded under $3 during the 2008 crisis, rose roughly 130% from December 2009 to December 2010 and continued climbing for years afterward. The company kept the 'transparency' positioning into later campaigns, including publishing unedited customer reviews on in-store menu screens.