Inflation was on the rise and Totino’s was being left on the shelf. To boost sales, we knew we needed to capture share outside of the frozen snacks category.

We discovered peak season for hot snacks and pizza delivery align perfectly with the NFL postseason during January-February (113 Index). But (flat) pizza reigned supreme, last year over 12.5MM pizzas were ordered on Super Bowl LVII alone.

With this in mind, our strategy became clear, “go after flat pizza on their home turf” We sought to get teens and families to ditch flat pizza for Totino’s Pizza Rolls for game day(s) - the mess-free, snackable, shareable, elite way to eat pizza on game day.

Our objective: Totino’s was on a mission to steal share from our frozen and delivery pizza competitors with the aim to increase national household penetration and drive long-term brand growth, generating some buzz along the way.

With a clear enemy driving the strategy, the campaign came to life in a Totino’s way, encapsulating the magical weirdness of Pizza Rolls in a game day setting - Fight. The. Flatties.

The idea itself exalted the reasons to believe - fast, cost effective, customizable, delicious snacks. And wrapped those functional benefits with the “feelings to believe” - great for parties, crowd favorites, and inherently social & playful.

The strategy also guided how we would architect tactics: developing storytelling devices for both TVC, OLV and paid social, while also capturing eyeballs on second screens and even activating taste buds IRL with a first-of-its-kind game day experiential activation.

Leveraging a celebrity was going to be key for buzz, especially in this timeframe. But rather than putting any celebrity in the mix, we wanted to work with a person who was as weird and lovable as pizza rolls themselves. Enter, Pete(zah) Davidson.

Upon interrogating the brief, teams aligned on looking at the competitive set through the lens of consumers, not through SKUs. Through social listening and assessment of shopping behaviors, and game day viewing trends, the challenges and opportunities became clear.

Challenges were mainly from the outside: Pizza OWNS the game day occasion, with 12.5MM pizzas being sold during ‘23 Super Bowl LVII alone and Inflation was still shrinking grocery basket sizes.

But the opportunities outweighed the challenges: pizza inflation was outpacing “normal” food inflation, NFL postseason viewership was trending up YoY, and we discovered most people tuning in to games were more excited about the food than the game itself.

By aligning the product “reasons to believe” and its “feelings to believe” we were able to identify the values we needed to exalt, and in doing so, clearly articulate the enemy we were pushing against - flat pizza.

By choosing to Fight The Flatties on their home turf, and adopting a postseason long blitz mindset, we surpassed both our sales and buzz expectations:

-January was the second largest sales month in brand history - EVER (behind March 2020). Outpacing the hot snacks category in sales by 160%.

-Campaign garnered 3.3 billion PR impressions, while achieving +8% Aided Brand Awareness, 4X higher than CPG norms.

-YouTube media achieved best in class results, driving 15% ad recall lift, 4.4% Consideration Lift and +3.1% purchase intent.

-Hot & Ready Delivery Activation earned 1 billion PR impressions.

-DoorDash media garnered 65% of sales from new buyers.

-Co-branded Tapatio hot sauce influencer swag kits garnered 13 million impressions.

-Brand generated 118 pieces of second screen content, garnering 96.34MM impressions, 5.21MM engagements, and 118MM views.

-Influencer content drove 6.1 million engagements, with one creator’s content going viral with +52MM views.