Americans will consume an estimated 30 million pizza slices during today’s Super Bowl. Having a pizza or two delivered on the day of the big game is as much a part of the Super Bowl as elaborate halftime shows and overwrought analysis of the two teams.

Pizza industry observers note the Super Bowl is the biggest day for business, worth an estimated $30 billion a year.

This year, one competitor is reaching out to potential customers with a different sort of pitch. The latest ad campaign by Domino’s Pizza can be summed up thusly: We were bad, really bad. But we’ve gotten a lot better.

The ads, called “The Pizza Turnaround,” quote focus group participants with harsh words about the old version of Domino’s. The slices were said to be “totally void of flavor.” One person says it “tastes like cardboard.” Another reviewer reports it is “the worst excuse for pizza I ever had.”

Ouch. Of course, the commercials don’t end there. Domino’s chefs and executives brag that they heard the complaints and have done something about them. They say they’ve improved their pizza and are offering customers an incentive to try Domino’s again.

Is it working?

It might take longer to see if there’s a surge in sales at the company’s 8,500 stores, but the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based firm’s stock price is up by almost 50 percent since December.

“We’re proving to our customers that we are listening to them by brutally accepting the criticism that’s out there,” Domino’s CEO Patrick Doyle told the Washington Post.

Andrew Keller is a creative director with the ad agency that created the ad campaign. He told the Chicago Tribune that because of the steady stream of social media “everyone is talking about you all the time.” Therefore, he said, ignoring one’s flaws isn’t so easy.

“People do not like to admit they’re wrong, but they do like to hear other people admit it,” Bill Benoit, a communications professor at Ohio University, told the Post. “When someone does fess up, people tend to respect you for having the courage to admit it.”

And, as we noted at the start, if that respect can turn into sales, it can be very lucrative.

All of which brings us to something as important — if not more important — than cheese, dough and sauce: Trust in government.

Poll results released Friday at the annual meeting of the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama (PARCA) noted a troubling development. (Full disclosure: I am a member of its board of directors.)

The poll found that 74 percent of respondents either “agree” or “strongly agree” with this statement: “Government officials in Montgomery do not especially care what people like me think.” Only 18 percent disagreed.

Randolph Horn, the pollster and a political science professor at Birmingham’s Samford University, noted, “Regardless of question wording, majorities characterized public officials as non-responsive.”

In other words, most Alabamians believe their state government is the equivalent of a pizza crust that tastes like cardboard.

So how are those bad reviews playing among the men and women seeking to become Alabama’s next chief executive?

Well, no one among those who attended the PARCA forum Friday said there isn’t a problem. Appealing to voters’ sense of distrust for government isn’t exactly a new strategy. Several, including Republican Bradley Byrne and Democrat Artur Davis, pointed to plans to reform the ethics of Alabama’s public officials.

Of course, Gov. Bob Riley has invested political capital in recent Legislature sessions trying to implement his robust ethics reforms, and to very little success.

Asked Friday for his views on the lack of trust in Montgomery, Riley said, “Tell me the last time you picked up a paper where someone wasn’t indicted or convicted” in the state.

“It would be difficult to not be cynical” after looking at the corruption cases that have ended with convictions of state legislators and the mayor of Birmingham.

Riley’s prescription to “develop the trust” between state government and its residents is to pass the package of reforms. “You want to change Alabama, you want to jump start it, this [ethics reform bill] is the way to do it,” the governor said.

Back to pizza.

“One thing I always tell my clients with thorny problems is if they can’t deny them, embrace them, because everyone else is going to or maybe already has,” Scott Farrell, a specialist in dealing with corporate reputations, told the Chicago Tribune when asked about the Domino’s campaign.

In Alabama, it appears the powerful but secretive interests stonewalling ethics reform ought to at the very least own up to their stake in something polling shows most of the state already believes.

And maybe we can dream of a day when state government can brag that it was bad and unresponsive, but is now new and improved.

Bob Davis is editor of The Anniston Star. Contact him at (256) 235-3540 or bdavis@annistonstar.com. You can follow him on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/EditorBobDavis.