It’s been about 20 years, but didn’t Ford have a campaign that was something like, “Have you driven a Ford?..Lately?”
They come right out and say it. Customers told em the crust sucked. The cheese sucked. The sauce sucked. They said it hurt their feelings, they agreed and then they improved their stuff. Please try our new specials and we will give you all your money back if you arent happy.
About the only thing they left out were curse words, people vomiting, and emergency room visits.
The Hardees campaign a while back was like that, but not quite so blatant.
During the beginning of the internet boom, AOL’s had a commercial where the CEO admitted that their service’s availability was terrible, but they were rolling out new hardware to address it.
I remember it well because he was pacing right in front of my product.
Here’s a coincidence. Right after my first post here, I went to this thread:
… and found this blurb right at the top of Giraffe Boards:
“Getting Started
For discussions on the rules and how the board works, suggestions to make the board better, or treatises on why this board sucks and always will.” 
(Linked from post #3.)
The third part is not exactly a self-slam, but there is an “admission” that this could be a valid opinion.
Just something to add to my 2010 list of coincidences.
Nevermind.
I have never seen these Domino’s commercials-----they must only air in certain markets, or else I haven’t been watching enough TV lately.
I have never thought too much of Dominos, but to say they sucked seems a bit overstated; they are a perfectly mediocre pizza, that is tasty enough if you haven’t eaten anything for a while.
Yeah, for a simple, cheap pizza I’ve never thought them particularly horrid either.
But the ad uses phrases from customers like “the crust tastes like cardboard”, “the sauce tastes like ketchup”, “your pizza is poor imitation of what a pizza should be” and so on and so on.
These arent exact quotes but they are close. I’ll give em credit for at least not wussing out once they decided on this ad campaign.
Hot Pockets. Now with real cheese.
This makes me think they’re airing them in places with lots of competition. I see them in San Francisco, and while I know there’s a Domino’s in my old neighborhood, there’s about a dozen pizza places within a ten minute walk of me. Maybe they’re trying to establish themselves as an option here, whereas in places with Pizza Hut/Round Table/Domino’s/etc only, they’re not bothering.
Or when they closed 75% of their Australian stores, admitted no-one here seemed to want their coffee, and more or less pulled out of the country?
In all seriousness, I am blown away that Dominos has a presence in San Fransisco at all, with all the truly great pizza options at your beck and call.
I suppose some like the uniform nature of a huge chain, rather than trying the various local independant joints. (that attitude is alien to me, but I guess it’s common enough in certain circles)
In that case, I think they were trying to address that their service was slow, rather then the coffee itself was poor. So they shutdown to try and train the staff to churn out more Frappacino’s per minute, or whatever.
Avis notoriously “tries harder” because they’re only number 2 in the car rental business. Which makes one wonder what’d happen if they grabbed that coveted top spot. That’d make for an interesting campaign : “We just don’t give a shit anymore, we’re numbah one !”
Hijack: It actually makes sense to me. I know exactly what I’m getting when I go to an Applebees. It may not be the best thing ever, but it’s consistent. If I try some local place there is a good possibility it will suck and I’ll end up going to Applebees later.
I can understand the reasoning behind what you say, but in a city world renowned for exceptional food (San Francisco) and a specific food (pizza) that is NOT hard to do a good, if not stellar job on, then I do have a bit of trouble getting my head around the mindset of going with the national, mediocre chain option…
Of course this is all acedemic, but it’s always good (for me at least) to try and see things from another different perspective.
I’m trying to think of companies that admitted their product sucked but I can’t come up with any others.
For those that have not seen the new commercial here is a Colbert Report clip that includes a new commercial to amusing effect.
That’s true – I remember an old episode of All in the Family in which Mike shows a product, and says something to the effect of “It says ‘New and Improved!’ What were we using before? Old and Lousy?”
Yes, that’s been used by them for 47 years now.
But actually, they are number one in the European market, and have been for about 10 years.
Their management now seems to say that staying number two is corporate policy now – they’ve told investors that they are not going to try to expand enough to overtake Hertz, they will just continue to use their current locations to “try harder” to satisfy their customers.
You can see one if you watch TV for longer than 5 minutes. Or go to their website about it.
Not quite the same thing as the OP asked for but…
I often point out that my company’s product “Sucks less.”
We’re actually at the top of our industry but I just happen to have a weakness for the shock factor.
Wasn’t Volkswagens ad campaign for the beetle in the sixties. It’s ugly but it works.