I’ve noticed lately that some marketing campaigns are taking a different approach to advertising their products. Instead of telling us all of the great fantastic parts of a product or place, they tell us the truth and admit that they totally screwedwebsite up. I really appreciate this new approach. We have to do that sometimes in our own lives: apologize, admit mistakes and commit to doing better.
One of the first campaigns I noticed doing this is Dominoes
The Show Us Your Pizza website from Dominoes offered real customers $500 if their real pizza photo won. From this campaign,CEO Patrick Doyle committed to “do better”.The campaign all started after the now infamous “prank video” where employees are shown doing dirty things to food. A viral video like that can totally make a company look bad. It also poorly reflects poorly on all restaurants across the country. Here’s an even more in depth look at the Dominoes apology videos and why the campaign was started. Below is a video of a disappointed customer and what Dominoes did to help keep him as a customer for life:
The second campaign that uses this strategy is Shoney’s:
I feel like I haven’t seen a Shoney’s in and around the Atlanta area -close to me- in the past few years. The only one I can remember was close to Woodward Academy in historic College Park. A Google search proved to me that there are still a few around the metro area. According to Nashville Public Radio the number of stores once was 1,600 around the country. That number has dwindled down to 230 after setbacks and a series of court settlements for discrimination. The ads feature the new company CEO David Davoudpour and emphasize that the company has hired a new five star chef named Will Eudy. They even have a four part video series featuring behind the scenes footage with the chef. Watching the behind the scenes video definitely made me feel like I knew him personally. Shoney’s calls the campaign “Starting Fresh” and is committed to showing that they have changed. On the Shoney Starting Fresh website customers can watch commercials from the campaign, view the behind the scenes videos and most importantly, join their email list to print coupons.
I think any company with the perfect track record is lying to the world and themselves. I think admitting missteps in quality and performance is an excellent idea. Just like any person out there who sees themselves as perfect and refuses to believe they need to change. What do you think about these types of campaigns? Do they make you want to continue supporting companies who disappointed you in the past?