We needed to reinforce Pizza Hut’s position as the pizza delivery service of choice in the minds of consumers by demonstrating the brand’s commitment to food innovation that makes it fun to share.

Our big idea came out of a tasty insight. When are people most likely to order a pizza? Movie night. Pizza and movies are a match made in heaven, so we combined the two in a revolutionary new way.

Working with product designers, packaging experts and street artists we created the Blockbuster Box – a unique pizza box that uses your smartphone to transform into a projector.

The limited edition Blockbuster Box was a resounding success, delivering on its goal of creating fame around Pizza Hut as an innovator – featuring in Time, CNN, Daily Mail, HuffPost and The Guardian to name a few. As part of the world’s largest pizza box collection it tours galleries around the globe.

The Blockbuster Box was created to celebrate the marriage between pizza and movies – bringing to life Pizza Hut’s commitment to food innovation in a way that was sure to demand attention.

Included with each box was a special custom-made ‘pizza-saver’ – half of which held a lens and half of which became a phone stand.

To project a movie simply remove a round perforated section at the front of the box and insert the lens. Scan a QR code on the side of the box and put your phone in the stand inside to project short films in the movie genre of your particular box.

To make the boxes as eye-catching as possible, so they would appeal to our young target audience, we worked with four Hong Kong street artists to design four box illustrations.

Each box had a name based on a popular movie genre and particular pizza: Horror (Slice Night / Pepperoni), Science Fiction (Anchovy Armageddon / Anchovies), Action (Fully Loaded / Super Supreme) and Romance (Hot & Ready / Hawaiian).

As well as giving each box name a fitting typographic treatment, each illustration also had visual cues linking back to the particular type of pizza it contained. Each illustration was also designed with an element that put a visual focus on the area where the included lens attached to the box.

The Blockbuster Box was launched in select Pizza Hut Hong Kong stores on April 17, 2015. Online/mobile banners were used as part of the promotion as well as in-store posters.

All 1,000 limited edition boxes sold out within the first week. Such was the success of the box that the design has now been patented.