You have to admire the courage to say it like it is. Or was.

Candor and reinvention paid off for Domino's.

According to this story in today's Ad Age online, after stating the obvious to their customers - that their pizza was bad - and fixing the problem, same-store sales went up 14.3%.

According to the article: "Ads for the chain's new pizza -- launched mid-December –- have been hard to miss. Measured-media spending increased 9% for Domino's during the first two months of 2010 compared with last year. . . . News of the chain's pizza launch may have become unavoidable because of massive pickup in print media and taste tests on morning news shows and blogs.

"But Domino's has certainly accomplished a few key objectives: generating massive trial and awareness."

The lesson? If your product sucks, do three things: 1 - admit it, 2 - fix it, 3 - tell everybody.

Leave any one of the three out and it's not going to work. Basic marketing I think is four words - Do good. Tell people.