2023 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

Pizza Pizza is Canada’s largest pizza chain. But size isn’t everything in the pizza game. The company needs to fight for every order. The competition is cutthroat, including massive international brands like Pizza Hut, Domino’s, and Little Caesars, regional chains, local mom-and-pop pizzerias, and, well, basically any restaurant you can order from on Uber Eats. More than any other QSR category, pizza is heavily reliant on offers.

Every week, mailboxes and inboxes across Canada are stuffed with deals on slices and pies. It’s all but impossible to break through without a new product innovation or a massive media budget. Without any new menu items to announce in summer 2022 or budget for a big media push, Pizza Pizza challenged us to create an offer that would generate conversation, interest — and most importantly, sales. The agency found inspiration in the brand’s recently introduced platform, “Everyone Deserves Pizza.” They saw an opportunity to create buzz by focusing on something on the minds of every Canadian: the rising cost of living.

A brand that truly believes “Everyone Deserves Pizza” would make sure everyone can get it, even when
times are tight.

In 2022, inflation raged across the country. The cost of living – especially food – was skyrocketing, and the cost of pizza ingredients rose even faster. Most pizza chains responded to the affordability crisis by raising prices. Instead, Pizza Pizza introduced the Fixed-Rate Pizza – an extra-large, four-topping pizza with a price that you could lock in for an entire year. No matter what happened to inflation or interest rates, your pizza rate would stay the same. The agency planned the campaign to launch just a few days after the Bank of Canada was scheduled to announce another interest rate hike. When the announcement came, it turned out to be the biggest increase in decades.

As everyone was talking about the impact of the increase on their variable-rate mortgages, they helped lighten the mood by treating pizza as a financial product. The agency launched with a PR-driven push supplemented by a small paid campaign including digital programmatic and digital OOH. All communications pointed to a landing page with a tongue-in-cheek “pre-approval” application form filled with questions like “Do you like pizza?” and “Does your face like eating pizza?”

Naturally, all applicants were approved, because everyone deserves pizza. Inspired by the success of the first six months of the program, Pizza Pizza extended the offer all the way through 2023. They also expanded the campaign, adding more paid media including a television commercial that looked, sounded, and felt
like a bank ad.

Within weeks, units sold per restaurant were 67% above the norm for a new special – even without a new product to sell. Six months into the 12-month offer, the Fixed-Rate Pizza had already exceeded $8 million in sales. With a total budget of just $284,672 in media, production, and PR, the return on spend was an astonishing 3,472%. Earned media was massive, with more than 91 million impressions.

The story was picked up by the Toronto Star, the Financial Post, CTV News, Bloomberg, and The Wall Street Journal – publications that don’t usually cover pizza promotions. Purchase habits changed too. Sales of XL pizzas grew 120% faster than large pizzas, and the average size of an order with a Fixed-Rate Pizza was more than 50% bigger than the norm. Little wonder Pizza Pizza decided to extend the program for the entirety of 2023 with an expanded media campaign. As of this writing, sales of the Fixed-Rate Pizza have topped
$15 million and counting.

Credits

Agency: Zulu Alpha Kilo
Chief Creative Officer: Zak Mroueh
Executive Creative Director: Brian Murray
Associate Creative Director/Copywriter: Jonah Flynn
Associate Creative Director/Art Director: Michael Siegers
Art Director: Duncan Porter
Designer: Ana-Marija Vlahovic, Crystal Huang
Account Team: Alyssa Guttman, Erika Dafoe
Strategy Director: Heather Segal, Cameron Fleming
Client: Pizza Pizza
Clients: Adrian Fuoco, Amber Winters, Raymond Luk, Adam Williamson, Susanna Rodrigues
Media Agency: Media Experts
Media Team: Nicolle Williams, Matthew Traynor
PR Agency: spPR
PR Team: Sonia Prasher, Nikita Shivdasani
Production House: Zulubot
Producer: Tim Lynch, Sarah Dayus
Motion Editor: Miguel Natividad
Original Music: Noah Mroueh, Zulubot
Mac Artist: Jeannette Downes