2023 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

Pizza Pizza has built its success on easy availability and a reliance –
perhaps an overreliance – on promotional pricing. In many parts of the country,
it feels like Pizza Pizza is always just … there. But this ubiquity means
Canadians often take it for granted.

The client had a new brand platform, “Everyone deserves pizza,” that made a virtue of
Pizza Pizza’s place in Canadian life. Now it needed to back it up with
action to drive conversation and sales.

With only a small budget available, it would need to be not only effective, but efficient.

A pizza chain that truly believes that “everyone deserves pizza” would make sure everyone could get it, even when times are tight.

In 2022, inflation in Canada hit highs not seen in decades. The cost of food in particular was skyrocketing. More than half of Canadians said they couldn’t
keep pace with the rising cost of living.

It was widely expected that the Bank of Canada would respond by raising
interest rates — putting an even greater squeeze on Canadian homeowners with
variable-rate mortgages. When that happened, Pizza Pizza knew mortgage rates would be a hot topic of conversation.

So it got ready.

When the rate hike came, it was the biggest interest rate increase in decades
and it dominated the headlines. A few days later, as people everywhere talked
about their variable-rate mortgages, it introduced a fixed rate
on a different kind of investment: pizza.

The Fixed-Rate Pizza is pretty simple. It simply announced a great deal on an extra-large four-topping pizza and promised not to raise the price for twelve months.

But what made the campaign fun – and buzzworthy – was the perfect timing and the unexpected treatment of pizza as a financial asset.

With a modest digital media buy, the campaign seeded a simple video introducing the idea. The rest was driven by earned media. Visitors at fixedratepizza.ca were invited to fill out a tongue-in-cheek application form with questions like “Do you like pizza?” and “Does your face like eating pizza?” Naturally, everyone was approved.
Because everyone deserves pizza.

Being first to market with a culturally relevant message paid off in a big way. In two weeks, the campaign earned more than 91 million free impressions from publications such as the Toronto Star, The Wall Street Journal, The Globe and Mail, the Financial Post, CTV News, and BNN Bloomberg. The campaign also generated substantial conversation on social media and was a hit on financial Twitter. In the first three months, Pizza Pizza sold more than 225,000 Fixed-Rate Pizzas.

All this was accomplished on a shoestring budget of $105,000 for media and $70,000 for production and PR. This means that in its first three months, the Fixed-Rate Pizza had an extraordinary rate of return of $22.17 for every dollar spent – or 2,217%!

But the best part of all might be that we saved pizza night
for thousands of Canadian families.

Credits

Agency: Zulu Alpha Kilo
Chief Creative Officer: Zak Mroueh
Executive Creative Director: Brian Murray
Associate Creative Director/Copywriter: Jonah Flynn
Associate Creative Director/Art Director: Michael Siegers
Art Director: Duncan Porter
Designer: Ana-Marija Vlahovic, Crystal Huang
Account Team: Alyssa Guttman, Erika Dafoe
Strategy Directors: Heather Segal, Cameron Fleming
Client: Pizza Pizza
Clients: Adrian Fuoco, Amber Winters, Raymond Luk, Adam Williamson, Susanna Rodrigues
Media Agency: Media Experts
Media Team: Nicolle Williams, Matthew Traynor
PR Agency: spPR
PR Team: Sonia Prasher, Nikita Shivdasani
Producer: Tim Lynch, Sarah Dayus
Production House: Zulubot
Motion Editor: Miguel Natividad
Original Music: Noah Mroueh, Zulubot
Mac Artist: Jeannette Downes