Papa John's Royal Wedding Pizza

THE CAMPAIGN BRIEF

Papa John’s had identified that the Royal Wedding weekend was potentially a great opportunity for increased sales of takeaway pizza.  As the UK’s number three in the market, Papa John’s is always behind Domino’s and Pizza Hut when it comes to potential marketing investment, and so they turned to HTPR to see if there was any opportunity for cut through via PR. In particular, Papa John’s UK was keen to impress its parent company in the USA with this activity, due to the anticipated global appeal of the event.  

OBJECTIVES

  • To raise awareness of the Papa John’s Pizza brand through widespread press coverage across the UK and, ideally, in the USA as well. The target OTS was 30 million.
  • To convey key messages that Papa John’s is synonymous with quality, through its ‘Better Ingredients. Better Pizza” pledge and the fact it’s the only pizza chain to use 100% fresh dough.
  • To boost sales

STRATEGY AND TACTICS

HTPR decided that the best way to meet the objectives was to launch an image led campaign through the creation of a unique pizza topping portrait of Prince William and Kate Middleton to celebrate their marriage. HTPR worked with Papa John’s and a food artist to create the mosaic portrait, which portrayed an excellent likeness of the couple through Papa John’s “Better Ingredients” toppings. Kate’s veil was made from mushrooms and her dress from cheese, while William’s morning suit was created out of salami and peppers!

HT decided to issue the photography of Papa John’s Royal Wedding Pizza, with a brief press release, a fortnight before the Royal Wedding. This strategy would provide the opportunity to maximise coverage before the big day, knowing that international media were descending on London in the days before the wedding.

OUTPUTS

HTPR issued three images of the pizza (one branded background, one plain background, and one with a wedding theme background) to UK media, both regional and national, as well as to news agencies and key news websites including Sky News, AOL, MSN and Yahoo!

                      
By the evening of Friday 15th April, a day after issuing the images and press release, Papa John’s Royal Wedding Pizza had become a global hot topic.

Not only did the story get picked up by key national media in the UK (including The Sun, i, Daily Telegraph, Daily Star, ITV Daybreak, Channel 5’s The Wright Stuff, MSN UK, AOL UK, YAHOO! UK), but the Royal Wedding Pizza also achieved extensive coverage across the USA and media enquiries came in from across the world. HT was contacted by news agencies and media in Japan, Brazil, New Zealand, Australia (Channel 7’s Sunrise) and France (AFP), who wanted to feature the pizza.

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