Imagine you could time travel back to September of 2009, just as the US is starting to rebound from the 2008 financial crisis. Even better, imagine you could do so with $1,000 to invest in any company you’d want. Maybe you’d choose Google? If so, your $1,000 would have turned into more than $6,000 within ten years. Maybe Apple is more up your alley. In that case a ten year investment would have gone from $1,000 to $15,000. If you were really smart, you’d pick Amazon, where $1,000 would have led to $29,000.
But if you would have known that Dominos was about to launch one of the most effective ad campaigns of all time, maybe you’d have chosen to invest in the beleaguered pizza chain. If you had, your $1,000 would turn into $47,000 in just ten years, as the Domino’s “We’re Sorry for Sucking” campaign drove Domino’s market share from 9% to over 15%.
In the early 2000s, Dominos was widely considered to be the worst tasting pizza chain in America. Consumer research indicated that people actually would prefer the taste of pizza when told it came from a generic brand as opposed to being told it was Dominos. Talk about needing to dig yourself out of a hole.
The “We’re Sorry for Sucking” campaign largely featured the CEO of Domino’s, speaking directly to camera, admitting the many flaws and shortcomings of not only their business and their products, but the pizza industry as a whole. He shared tweets of people blasting their service and held up pictures of Domino’s pizza that had been totally wrecked by careless delivery people. He even showed some of the tricks pizza brands, including Domino’s, use to make their food look unrealistically delicious in commercials.
And when he was done admitting to these faults, he promised that he would do better. He promised that Domino’s would do better. In the series of advertisements that followed he explained the changes they were making to fix the things that consumers didn’t like, and amazingly, people started to believe him. Domino’s had built credibility with their humility and transparency. What they did was clever, creative, and buzzworthy, but it was also authentic and honest.
But what inspires me most about the story of Domino’s resurgence isn’t so much the idea for the campaign (which was brilliant), it’s what they did once they had the idea. To put your CEO front and center. To call out your own products. To admit where you’ve taken short cuts. To admit where you’ve deceived customers. Talk about a gigantic risk.
Domino’s trusted their understanding of their current situation and went all in on the best solution they could come up with. The chips were stacked against them, but when the right hand came along, they weren’t afraid to go all in. I can’t tell you how many CMOs I’ve sat with over the years who had some grand idea, some brilliant new strategy, some report that illuminated some new solution, but they refused to do more than dip their toes into the water. For fear of failure or of firing they didn’t put their money where their mouth was. Domino’s did just that.