Domino’s is potentially one of the best masters of contra-marketing. That’s where a company’s core product/service is pretty bad, and it’s widely known among customers/prospects that it’s pretty bad, and marketing is charged with somehow turning around to the company’s advantage. Somehow, they have done it repeatedly — often using technology to mask the magic.

Last year, it was a truly interesting campaign to get people to pay for their pizzas using Twitter. Never mind that Domino’s conceded that it didn’t work for more than 90 percent of orders. It had people ordering for the novelty of it, and thereby endorsing the purchases for all of their followers. In what was perhaps my favorite quote from any corporate spokesperson last year, the Domino’s spokesperson said at the time: “We have a brand where people are no longer embarrassed to order.” In effect, they turned a bad product into a campaign of “where are not nearly as bad we were.”

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