March Madness is a key moment for basketball fans. Basketball culture is massive in the US, encompassing entertainment, fashion and technology. At the heart of it all lies sneaker culture, where basketball shoes inspire cult like followings, tying together every facet of basketball culture.

This led us to the idea of Pizza Hut Pie Tops: a basketball shoe with a button on the tongue that orders Pizza Hut to wherever the wearer is. All someone has to do is press the button, and their favorite pizza is automatically delivered straight to them, wherever they are. What could be easier? It would be a fashion story and a technology story, as well as something entertainers would want to show off. The Pie Tops became the centerpiece of our campaign, the main proof point of ease, while giving us a credible voice in basketball culture.

We designed the Pie Tops, then partnered with custom sneaker legend Dominic Chambrone, AKA "The Shoe Surgeon,” to custom build each pair, helping give them some cred.

We wanted to treat this like a true sneaker launch. So we created 64 pairs, giving them to key influencers in sports, fashion, entertainment, tech and food. Each influencer then released their own review. On-air talent ordered pizza with them live during a March Madness game. A film treating the Pie Tops like a hot new sneaker was released online. And we made a TV spot starring March Madness star and NBA legend Grant Hill. By creating the first-ever pair of shoes that order pizza, instead of just a TV spot, we broke through the cluttered media landscape, proving that Pizza Hut was committed to ease and convenience.

The Pie Tops campaign shattered expectations, earning media from outlets around the world:

-Pizza Hut garnered over 1.82 billion earned impressions from three weeks of PR activity, 220% higher than our initial PR projection.

-The Pie Tops were featured in 1,010 unique broadcast and 221 unique online placements. We were covered in publications across verticals, from Time to Engadget to HypeBeast to Business Insider to Teen Vogue.

-The Daily Show touted us as “America’s Win of the Week,” the Today Show tested Pie Tops out on-air to show their ease of delivery and TMZ called Pie Tops “amazing” and an innovation that has us “moving in the right direction.”

This big PR-able idea not only garnered buzz, but also began to shift consumers’ perception of us. Pie Tops garnered over 90% positive sentiment in consumer conversation, compared with a category average of 32%.