Domino's have a new campaign - Pizza Turnaround - that's attracting a lot of attention. It does something that is, on the face of it anyway, very bold - it admits their pizzas have been crap:
I'm not a huge fan of this. On the one hand, I genuinely like the principle of a company "opening itself up" to the public, exposing its workings, being ultra-candid, and showing people where it's moving to as a business. And, being English, I like a bit of self-deprecation. I also applaud attempts to break with ad conventions. This is from Slate's commentary on the campaign:
These are commercials masquerading as documentaries—designed to pierce through the viewer's built-up resistance to typical scripted, acted spots.
But therein lies the problem. The campaign is very obviously scripted and acted. These are clearly not real people saying spontaneous things. They are actors (or perhaps in some case Domino's employees who have been made to sound like actors) delivering cute lines, in contrived environments. Consequently it doesn't feel authentic. It feels like a trick, a scam, a masquerade, albeit a fun one. In other words...it's an ad.
It's like the client and agency got so far towards a truly bold and radical execution of a bold strategy - and then got nervous, and decided to return to those old, reassuringly conventional ways...
