If you’ve read the great book by Marketing Made Simple TV guest, Chris Malone, The HUMAN Brand,as I did, you know the story of Domino’s Pizza.

Domino’s Pizza was facing slumping sales and bad review when they decided to embark on a key initiative - to make the industry’s best pizza. It took years, but finally Domino’s had a great tasting pizza. Now how to tell the world?

How Domino’s Pizza used Extreme honesty

The CEO of Domino’s Pizza did a search on the term “New and Improved.” It seemed everyone was using it. So he decided then and there to do the opposite.

Tell people honestly how bad their old pizza was and lay all their cards on the table.

One day a young man got a Domino’s Pizza. Upon opening the box, he found that the cheese from the pizza had stuck to the box, so little was left on his pizza.

He took a photo with his smartphone and posted it on social media with the note “You should be ashamed of yourself, Domino’s.” He thought he has vented - maybe they will post a comment.

Instead of ignoring it or apologizing via a Tweet to the young man, they put the photo on national TV to show the world their mistake. The franchisee who made the pizza knew corporate was watching

They even used a billboard in Times Square and post live Tweets - without editing. If the tweet even said “Domino’s sucks” it posted.

Sales grew dramatically for Domino’s Pizza. Turns out people respond positively to extreme honesty.

Extreme honesty leads to trust. As Chris Malone wrote Trust and Competence are the hallmarks of a great brand - or person. You need to both be a warm and friendly person, as well as very good at what you do.  One without the other does not work.

• A warm friendly person without talent gets little respect.
• A talented person with no personality gets little respect.

For an example of a person who epitomizes both warmth and competence, look at Derek Jeter of the New York Yankees. He’s a classy person who engenders warmth, as well as a very good baseball player (competence)

Trust = Warmth.

What does the story of Domino’s Pizza have to do with an online TV show?

For almost two years, our quality sucked. The videos were grainy and the sound quality was mediocre. Yet great guests kept coming on the show. Like Domino’s, our old product was quite bad.

The only way to get really good quality was to hire a video crew with HD video cameras. That’s what we did - shooting my good friend Sandra Zoratti in Jeffrey Hayzlett’s NYC office.

Early in February, Watchitoo released a major new product called Streaming Pro. That changed the game completely. Our quality - both video and audio - improved dramatically.

Like Domino’s Pizza, our old product was a disaster and our new one was dramatically better. Do I dare say that Marketing Made Simple TV is “new and improved?’ Heavens no.

We offer our past guests our sincere apologies. We are deeply sorry for our past bad quality.

We want to make it up to you. If you are a past guest on the show, we hereby offer you a chance to come back and do a brand new show.

Yes, Marketing Made Simple TV’s new product is awesome. We’re getting great feedback on our new audio and video quality.  We hope you enjoy the show!

How good is it? Check out this tweet from the CEO of PureMatter Brand Marketing (and author of Human2Human.)

Tweet friom Bryankramer
@fearlesscomp love it!! (My show on YouTube) Green light go :-)#H2H

Jeff Ogden is the Creator and Host, as well as the visionary creator of Marketing Made Simple TV.