Our client, the Hell Pizza chain, had acquired quantities of Blair’s 3am, the world’s hottest chilli sauce. As toxic as pepper spray, they wanted to use it to promote their evil image. Their initial idea was to create the world’s hottest pizza. We respectfully suggested that while this was good PR, it was unlikely to have much effect on sales. Together we brainstormed the concept of Pizza Roulette. The sauce would be added to just one slice of a whole pizza, but nobody would know which one.

To let the New Zealand public know about Pizza Roulette we sent out an EDM, used outdoor, POS posters, the world’s longest disclaimer, a web film of a pro sports team trying the challenge, and ran promotions on Facebook. It launched on the 11th of March and the Internet jumped on it. Hell Pizza is a brand that likes to court controversy. We just needed to put the promotional material in the right hands and let our online fans (and haters) do the rest.

The promotion spread across the web: the initial video has been viewed 250,000 times, Pizza Roulette made the front page of Reddit, was reported on by CNN and spawned countless videos on YouTube as people filmed themselves and their friends trying the product. This led to 17.5% increase in new customers through Pizza Roulette and a 10.5% increase in overall sales March/April 2011 -2012. Sales in milk have also increased considerably.