“How many times have you wondered why the products you buy don’t look as good in person as they do in TV ads?”

It was with that question that Domino’s chief marketing officer, Russell Weiner, revealed the brand’s latest marketing coup: the photo promise. No more misleadingly delicious artificial snaps said America’s number one pizza brand this month. From now on, it’s aux natural – photos of pizzas as they actually appear. To compliment the move Domino’s have set up a competition – to get people right across the States to send in their own home pizza shots, with 4 prizes of $500 up for grabs. They also released this video below.

The ‘photo promise’ is the most recent manifestation of what has been a stunningly ballsy and (so far) successful revitalisation of the Domino’s brand over the last 6 months. Market leader for its core values of convenience and low cost, Domino’s had consistently scored very poorly on consumer taste tests. So in December 2009, as the brand celebrated its 50thbirthday, they decided to fundamentally change their pizza recipe. More surprising still, Domino’s focussed the relaunch around a brutal appraisal of their past product quality in this ad, flaunting the fact that consumers thought their crusts were like cardboard and their tomato sauce tasted like ketchup.

Few market-leading brands have marked their 50^thyear in business with a complete shakeup of their core product. Even fewer brands have publicly accepted and even deliberately drawn attention to their history of poor product quality.  Domino’s did, and have been rewarded with a 14.3% US sales increase in the first quarter of 2010. Will the bubble burst? Will the US-only product change, which has left global consumers with the same old “cardboard” crusts, create wider brand tensions? If the ‘photo promise’ is anything to go by, Russell Weiner and co certainly believe they’re on to a winning strategy.

Shakespeare was wrong, apparently. A rose by any other name would not smell as sweet according to Chevrolet’s staff or, more importantly, its customers.

Controversy was sparked in the States last week when a leaked GM Motors memo revealed that, for brand consistency, staff were to never use the name ‘Chevy’ when discussing the Chevrolet brand. “We’d ask that whether you’re talking to a dealer, reviewing dealer advertising or speaking with friends and family, that you communicate our brand as Chevrolet moving forward” it read.

The backlash from fans of Chevy – perceived as a quintessential American icon – has largely been covered in the US media with negativity. But have they missed the point? Could it be that Chevrolet have just pulled off one of the most masterfully subtle marketing campaigns in history?

The outpouring of love and devotion to the Chevy brand following the leak has been simply phenomenal. Within hours commentators and bloggers across the country began vehemently extolling the virtues of Chevy. “Chevy is as American as baseball and apple pie” declared one blogger. “I love you Chevy” wrote another. Across the world people were being reminded of Chevy’s central place in American culture, from featuring in Don McLean’s American Pie to being named dropped in songs by Snoop Dogg and The Beastie Boys.

The release of this simple one-page memo triggered the emergence of louder and more visible brand advocates than any multi-million dollar advertising campaign ever could. Suddenly thousands of individuals were tweeting Chevy’s core brand image with passion and for free. Was the memo a deliberate moment of genius from GM? Their subsequent backtrack over the issue – where they claimed the memo was “poorly worded” and that actually “we love Chevy” – may suggest so. If not, they must be the luckiest brand in the world right now.

Sifting through the pages of media commentary from last night’s political TV debate – the output of furrow-browed hacks furiously trying to predict the political ramifications of every stutter, smirk and sneer – I stumbled across a brilliantly quirky piece of analysis on The Guardian’s website…..

[James Wannerton, 51, is president of the UK Synaesthesia Association. He experiences words as tastes and textures, a neurological condition known as lexical-gustatory synaesthesia.]

Gordon Brown’s name tastes horrible, and his flavour was nasty – like soil mixed with Marmite. That said, he was good on education, when he tasted of peaches, sliced potato and bacon.

Nick Clegg tastes of a pickled onion yet he kept turning soft, mushy and warm. Immigration was good for him. His speech reminded me of sweets I had as a kid – fruit pastilles, Spangles and liquorice.

David Cameron’s flavour was best. He gave me a taste of ink, which I find comforting. His name tastes of macaroons, but he said sorry so frequently it covered the macaroons with condensed milk

Wouldn’t it be fascinating to apply the same test on brands? If you invited some synesthetes to a focus group, you would be able to explore what a brand tasted like, smelt like, looked like. It would take visualising brand identity to a whole new level. What would Staropramen look like?  How would Vodafone smell? What would the taste of Ikea be? We can only hope a bit better than “soil mixed with Marmite”.