After an eight-year hiatus, G4, the gaming and fandom network, returned. To stay current with new audiences, G4 came back with a digital-first approach, making live-stream platforms a priority while also ensuring that content would be available and accessible on traditional platforms like linear. This unique distribution gives brand partners creative and innovative advertising opportunities within G4's programming. One of those brand partners, Pizza Hut, joined the network for its return and used all facets of G4's revolutionary approach for a successful brand integration.

Bringing Pizza Hut to G4's audience had to be authentic and go beyond what traditional sponsorships have been. To do so, the partnership needed to resonate with what G4's audience wants: a healthy mix of comedy and expertise. It couldn't be too serious and had to be able to poke fun at itself.

Enter Ripp Blazer, Pizza Hut’s time-traveling Pizza delivery guy.

Ripp Blazer, Pizza Hut’s time-traveling Pizza delivery guy, comes to G4 to create Pizza-Topia to stop Pizza-pocalypse. The problem is, he jumped too early, so now it seems like he’s just living at G4 and jumping into shows at random times.

From crashing the party at Attack of the Show! to finagling his way into major esports events, we find Ripp in a plethora of ridiculous situations where he tells it like it is to G4 hosts by making bold predictions about the future of gaming, pizza, and geek stuff.

Our hosts put up with his antics because he always provides free pizza for us and the folks in chat. By the last episode on G4, Ripp claims that he has saved the future and it’s thanks to everyone at G4. As he leaves the hosts can’t help but miss and regard him as a hero.

Along with the strong creative that came directly from the writers and showrunners of G4's programming, there were two main components of the campaign strategy.

First, G4 and Pizza Hut would introduce Pizza Hut in an innovative way that “uses all parts of the pepperoni pizza” by utilizing our chat functionality on Twitch, leveraging our highly-engaged Discord and Reddit communities, live interaction via QR Codes on streams and giveaways with rewards including Pizza Hut's product. This would spur a high rate of audience engagement and interaction. Deploying G4's arsenal of tactics listed above to create a dialogue with its community would be paramount to the campaign's success.

Second, the campaign would utilize G4's distribution model to ensure the activation was seen by as many eyeballs as possible. The campaign would start on digital platforms such as Twitch and then be seeded to linear broadcast, FAST channels, social, and VOD.

The execution began with creating the story behind Ripp Blazer, how he arrived at G4 and why. G4 formed a character persona through this narrative, the custom-made props that he would need, and his futuristic outfit to match his personality. Each appearance would highlight his personality and quirks, and stay true to both Pizza Hut and G4’s brand identity. He became a G4 and Pizza Hut character that resonated no matter where he landed.

Ripp Blazer's character creation began in June 2021 and was completed in November 2021. He joined the network launch and appeared on the first episode of Attack Of The Show! in November 2021 and concluded in April 2022. In total, Ripp appeared 12 times across G4’s programming including Attack Of The Show, Xplay, and Esports specials along with one branded spot and six social appearances.

The Pizza Hut campaign was an overwhelming success across the board, achieving every goal set forth. The G4 community instantly connected with Ripp Blazer. On G4’s Discord, Pizza Hut has been mentioned over 700 times with positive sentiment. “Ripp Blazer is the future of advertising,” one fan wrote. “I just put my order in at Pizza Hut. Big Dinner Box FTW!,” another wrote.

Because the goal of authenticity succeeded, the second goal of a high engagement rate was also achieved. In its first month, there were over one quarter-million audience interactions and engagements across Twitch and YouTube with numerous memes and references to Pizza Hut.

Finally, the goal of providing significant reach succeeded via G4’s unique distribution model. Because G4 is able to spread content via digital channels, linear broadcast, and social, Ripp Blazer's appearances yielded over 180k hours watched, or 10.8 millionminutes watched.