Though we all may love Thanksgiving, there is the unspoken truth that cooking the centerpiece of the meal, turkey, isn’t for the faint of heart. People reported that the most stressful part of Thanksgiving was actually cooking turkey (not hosting the in-laws!). And in 2022, that stress grew exponentially as the cost per pound of turkey soared by 73%. It’s enough to make anyone turn to another, perhaps more cheesy option.

But pizza usually isn’t top of mind during Thanksgiving. In order to gain attention where our audience is more stressed than usual, balancing holiday traditions with holiday demands, we reinforced our “crazy fun” personality to give our audience a reprieve in their day. We wanted to take some of the more stressful aspects of the holiday experience and flip them on their heads, giving our audience a much needed laugh during the stressful holiday season.

We told our audience of Crowd Pleasers and Hungry Dads to forget all the basting and baking. With Little Caesars’ Turkey! Turkey! Cutter™, we gave our audience the chance to turn any Little Caesars pizza into an all-new and improved Thanksgiving Turkey. With an oversized cookie cutter in the shape of a turkey our audience could quite literally cut any size Little Caesars pizza into the shape of a turkey. Talk about a centerpiece!

In order to drive attention and reach for the Turkey! Turkey! Cutter™, we launched a promo video announcing Turkey 2.0 on Instagram and TikTok. We rewarded fan engagement by surprising folks with a Turkey! Turkey! Cutter™. Additionally, we scouted out people who posted turkey fails from last year, and sent them an offer for a free pizza and a Turkey! Turkey! Cutter™.

For our target audience, life gets pretty real. They’re juggling a lot of responsibilities between work, school, and family. But they’re always looking to find the silver lining throughout that struggle. Pizza is one way to make that silver lining shine even brighter, with Hungry Dads eating pizza 1.6 times a week on average.

As inflation in the United States continued to rise in fall 2022, we noticed an uptick in stress and anxiety amongst our target audience in social listening. Grocery bills, were mounting, especially in regards to the big Thanksgiving meal. But amongst that anxiety, we saw a Bloomberg article that highlighted that our target audience was seeking out other alternatives, both for cost savings but also for taste. Thus, we set out to create a new way for our audience to enjoy Thanksgiving that didn’t break their banks nor sacrificed the notion of a delicious Thanksgiving meal.

Given that we were capitalizing on a culturally relevant moment, we needed to act fast. In the span of 4 days total, we designed, manufactured and sent out our turkey cutters all while producing and shooting a video to promote the product.

This campaign was executed from November 18 - November 24, 2022. Given the campaign’s real-time nature, we launched on owned social channels, specifically, Instagram and TikTok, with a video highlighting the turkey cutter.

Our Turkey! Turkey! Cutter™ promo videos had over 88k views and a 10% engagement rate, making it one of the most engaged with pieces of Little Caesars’ content in 2022. What’s more, our promo video was the most shared piece of content for the brand in 2022, demonstrating how our audience not only resonated with the idea, but also wanted to amplify it on our behalf.