2023 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

Pizza Pizza has become a household name in Canada due to its wide availability and frequent promotional pricing. However, this ubiquity has led to the brand being taken for granted by many Canadians. To combat this, we launched a new brand platform, "Everyone deserves pizza," which emphasized Pizza Pizza's significance in Canadian life. To back up this platform and drive conversation and sales, we needed to take action.

In 2022, inflation in Canada soared to levels not seen in decades, and the cost of food, in particular, was rapidly increasing. Over half of Canadians reported that they were struggling to keep up with the rising cost of living. It was expected that the Bank of Canada would raise interest rates in response, which would further burden homeowners with variable-rate mortgages or mortgages up for renewal. We recognized that mortgage rates would be a hot topic of conversation, and we prepared accordingly.

When the interest rate hike occurred, it was the most significant increase in decades and dominated the news. We saw an opportunity and introduced the Fixed-Rate Pizza, which was a great deal on an extra-large four-topping pizza, with a promise not to raise the price for twelve months. We treated pizza as a financial asset, which was unexpected and generated buzz. We launched a modest digital media buy and seeded a simple video introducing the concept. The rest was driven by earned media. Visitors to fixedratepizza.ca were invited to fill out a tongue-in-cheek application form, which asked questions like "Do you like pizza?" and "Does your face like eating pizza?" Everyone was approved because everyone deserves pizza.

Our culturally relevant message paid off in a big way. The campaign earned over 91 million free impressions in just two weeks from publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The Globe and Mail, and CTV News, among others. The campaign generated significant 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, and the campaign had an extraordinary rate of return of $22.17 for every dollar spent on media, production, and PR - or 2,217%! However, the best part was that we helped save 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
Group Account Director: Alyssa Guttman
Account Director: Erika Dafoe
Strategy Director: 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