TakeAway: Pizza Hut has created a new ad campaign that moves from a pricing war with rivals Domino’s and Papa John’s to differentiation purely based on branding through employee spokespeople.
There is no mention of deals or new-product offerings, and the ads seem to be working.
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Excerpted from AdAge, “Pizza Hut Makes Its Staff the Stars in Brand-Focused Campaign” By Rupal Parekh,September 20, 2010
There are signs that Pizza Hut is beginning to gain some ground on category leader Domino’s, which has 18.4% of the market compared to Pizza Hut’s 15%. Domino’s marketing strategy – something akin to “our pizza was gross, but we fixed the recipe” – was working to some degree. Domino’s posted historic same-store sales increases earlier this year of 14.4% vs. Pizza Hut’s 6%, but in the second quarter, Pizza Hut led same-store sales with an 8% lift.
Pizza Hut’s CMO said: “We just need to incite the consumer to pull up the emotional side of the brand and the high-quality products we provide…Our brand stands for quality already…we have no need to denigrate the brand in order to get people to engage with it.”
That Pizza Hut is turning employees into spokespeople makes it one of several brands (including Nationwide Insurance, Best Buy and BP)
in the past year that have tried to personalize their companies by using homegrown marketing talent, perhaps not coincidentally, while struggling with the recession.
While it’s not a goal of the campaign, the youthful skew could help connect with what Kurt Kane, VP-brand advertising at Pizza Hut, earlier this year told Ad Age is one of two of Pizza Hut’s core consumer groups, families and young adults.
Edit by AMW
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Full Article:
http://adage.com/article?article_id=145981
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