Context:

In 2023, Pizza Hut launched a new ‘light and airy’ (medium thickness) crust option. And while it was new to us, this offering was seen as a staple at every other pizza place.

Challenge/Objective:

The pizza market is flooded with light and airy crust options — from big chains, to local pizzerias, to frozen grocery store pizzas. To build hype around the brand’s latest crust, we needed to stand out from the rest, giving our Gen Z target a reason to consider, visit, and try Pizza Hut beyond traditional advertising.

Our objective? Connect with Gen Z and bring Pizza Hut top of mind come pizza time.

With our target going elsewhere for their pizza fix, we looked to our competitors to help promote the Hut. How? By turning an empty pizza box from them into fresh pizza from us. Pizza Refill was a one-day only event where customers could bring in any empty box from any competitor and Pizza Hut would refill it for free.

Our campaign took a digital-first approach to reach our digital-native Gen Z target, with a strong presence on TikTok.

Through the campaign, we were able to let people know where to find their nearest Hut, while also turning a visit to our competitors into a revisit to us.

Pizza Hut targets Gen Z and younger Millennials. Specifically, those who aren’t usually considering Pizza Hut in their pizza rotation and are more likely to go elsewhere for their pizza order. We needed to find relevance with this target in a big way, reminding them of where to find their local Pizza Hut and that our pizza is worth the trip.

The digital-first campaign ran for just one week, with a :15s launch video that featured pixelated competitor boxes as people rushed into the store. The video was supported by social posts and community engagement to detail event logistics (one day only, first 100 customers per store, any pizza box, any size from any competitor, including frozen pizzas, etc).

The campaign boosted Pizza Hut’s cultural cred, seeing huge lifts across its social channels — the highest in the Hut’s history.

Social Fandom:

+28% in TikTok followings.

78.5% of views came from organic FYP placements.

27x new followers across all socials (vs a typical week).

Competitive Buzz:

Pizza Hut overtook Domino's for the #1 spot in brand buzz (YouGov).

Our following grew 170% faster than competitors.

Placed top of mind among Gen-Z, with 52.2M impressions.

Bottom Line:

We increased in-store traffic by 100% when compared to the average of the previous seven Mondays. This also led to a 10% increase in total paid medium pizzas sold compared to the average of the previous seven Mondays — customers actually paid to add additional pizzas to their free pizza refill! This was a resounding success, bringing traffic to our stores to try (and buy) our new Handcrafted Crust.