On Sunday, I literally walked off a plane home from Las Vegas, where I speaking at the Digital Hollywood at CES event, got in my car and drove to a bar where I can watch the Packers, a group of men born of steel and brawn, lose in a heartbeat to a team named after a small red bird.  Between periods of tearing what is left of my hair out of my head, I watched some commercials.

Most of the commercials were unremarkable or part of the awesome new series of Bud Light “Too Easy/Too Hard” ads that just keep getting better with every new release. Then there was an interesting new ad from Domino’s that made me say, “wow, look at the balls on these guys!”

This is actually the long form version of the ad that Domino’s very wisely posted to its own channel on YouTube (See that, other brands? You  can either put it up there, nice and pretty, or some dude will record it off the TV with his camera phone…). The shorter, 30 second version that they show on TV cuts the ad down to the CEO speaking, the focus group footage, and the chefs and management team at Domino’s reacting to the carnage, without any of the folksy history of the company, which was probably a good move on their part.

The writers of Ad Age didn’t like this new strategy at all… I mean, at all, at all (link).  Bob Garfield went so far as to bring up that video of a couple of the chefs at one location doing evil, evil things to someone’s pizza one night, which I totally forgot about, since it was like nine months ago.  I mean, say what you will about the ad, but let’s not kick them when they’re down here, Bob.

Anyway, the campaign is called “The Pizza Turnaround” because Domino’s is basically saying, “hey, we know our pizza sucks, but we’re going to do whatever we can to make it better.”  I personally think that’s a great strategy to put out there for everybody to see.  I mean, we all agree, Domino’s is on the lower end of the pizza quality spectrum for sure, so you’re not going to get much of an argument from the rest of the country.

It’s strategies like this one where I wish I could have been in the meetings, just to see the pitch.  “Hey guys, the focus group says our pizza sucks ass, so our plan is just to own it and fix it and move on.”  I swear, half the room must have lost their minds, and I hope the CEO took note of those people and fired them right away because it means those are the folks that were probably the problem.

As far as the public goes, there really can’t be too much backlash.  If you think about it, all they can really do is agree with you and then hopefully realize that the only reason they know the pizza sucks in the first place is because they ate it at some point.  “Wow, you’re right, your pizza does taste like catchup covered cardboard, but I’m the sucker that keeps buying it, so who’s the real doofus here?”

J.

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2. New Subway radio spot sucks as much as the new sandwich its selling
3. Hey Fresh & Easy, you’re not saving money by using real customers if the ad sucks