Pizza Hut ‘Cheese Codes’

Pizza Hut Malaysia leveraged the 2022 FIFA Men’s World Cup by working with Dentsu Creative Malaysia and Carat Media to leverage gamer anticipation, excitement and engagement through an in-game marketing initiative called ‘Cheese Codes’ which incentivised players to recreate the tournament’s key highlights, skills and goals in the mobile football gaming space (including FIFA Mobile, Football Manager and Top Eleven) and boosted Cheesy Poppers Pizza orders by 14% during the tournament.

 

Territory: Malaysia

 

Agency: Dentsu Creative, Carat Media, Totally Awesome, Bidstack & Gadsme

 

 

Objective

 

In December 2022, the FIFA Men’s World Cup became something of a battleground for Quick Service Restaurant rivals which led to traditional media spaces becoming cluttered and confused with an avalanche of adverts and promotions and fast food brands around the world sought to drive sales by leveraging this global mass engagement opportunity.

 

Pizza Hut Malaysia challenged its agencies with a brief to maximise share of voice and drive engagement and sales (primarily of Cheesy Poppers Pizza) during the tournament with a real-time contextual brand campaign that captivated consumers during crucial game-linked purchasing moments.

 

 

Activation

 

Dentsu Creative Malaysia teamed up with Carat Media and set out to ‘change the playing field and play the game with a new audience – gamers’ as planners were informed by research which showed a recent increase downloads of mobile football games (including FIFA Mobile, Football Manager and Top Eleven) to nearly 1.2 million active gamers (and climbing).

 

The research also found that while gamers were a largely untapped audience for QSRs, they formed a large and growing cohort of passionate soccer fans who’s behaviour included recreating the skills, goals and scorelines of real tournament live matches in the virtual gaming world.

 

The team chose to tap into this and offer a real-time, in-game hack for football gamers to order special Cheesy Poppers Pizza combos.

 

The resulting campaign, titled ‘Pizza Hut Cheese Codes’, dropped unique promo codes on in-game, animated A-boards in real time. Every time a goal was scored on live TV, a unique Cheese Code dropped on the dynamic A-boards in mobile football games. Gamers could simply tap on the board to order limited-edition pizza combos in real life.

 

The codes were created by combining player names with pizza toppings: for example, MBAPPEPPERONI, MEZZIRELLA, CRISPIANO, NEYMARINARA, MODRICHILI etc.

 

These codes dropped when the player scored during a live match. Gamers could tap to order and redeem special pizza combos without disrupting gameplay.

 

 

“The World Cup is a prime period for any brand, and we understand the costs of battling competitors for a greater share of voice. Instead, we sought a strategic creative solution that showcased Dentsu Creative’s unified strength. Recognizing gamers’ aversion to traditional advertising, our idea seamlessly connected across relevant channels like Twitter to generate more buzz”, explained Dentsu Creative Malaysia CEO Kunal Roy.

 

“Our commitment to Modern Creativity compelled us to play a different game compared to our competitors. Football thrives in the real-time world. Our fan engagement campaign aimed to infiltrate real-time conversations for real-life conversions. This move paid off with boosted sales and enhanced brand sentiment—a win-win-win for us, the brand, and the consumers,” outlined Dentsu Creative Malaysia Group CCO Andrew Low. “As the World Cup progressed, the team concurrently tracked live games, selecting codes that would be relevant to the player that scores a goal,”

 

“This allowed us to stay current and break through the media chaos with increased attention and engagement,” added Creative Director at Dentsu Creative Malaysia Sid Nair,.

 

“The success of this campaign exceeded our personal and marketing expectations,” CMO of Pizza Hut Malaysia CMO Emily Chong. “The gamified approach and marketing results speak for themselves. We look forward to engaging new customers in their own gaming worlds in 2023 and beyond”.

 

The campaign was developed to a brief from client Pizza Hut Malaysia where the team was spearheaded by Chief Marketing Officer Emily Chong and Brand/Marketing Manager Jacelyn Lim.

 

The campaign was conceived by a team at creative agency Dentsu Creative which included Chief Executive Officer Kunal Roy, Group Chief Creative Officer Andrew Low,

 

Creative Director Sid Nair, Copywriter Camilia Johari, Designer Diyanah Poedjo, Senior Strategic Planner Rafique Ramleh, Social Media Director Nicholas Corneilius, Business Director Janine Wai, Assistant Digital PR Manager Szen Li Cheam, Senior Digital PR Executives Amy Maisara and Abdul Rahman, Senior Digital PR Executive Claudia Monteiro, Senior Producer Wai Kin Ng, Producer Michelle Loo, Motion Graphics Designer Najwan Danil-Taridi and Partner (Head of Product & Growth) Winnie Chen-Head.

 

Media was handled by Carat Media where the group working on the initiative included

 

Partner (Head of Carat Media) Vanitha Selvathurai, Head of Strategy Mohamed Salim, Director of Client Leadership Manpreet Kaur, plus Senior Executive of Media Planning Man Shin Yeong.

 

With production from Totally Awesome’s Regional Gaming Director Gary Fung and a team that included Kieu Nguyen, Destinee Koh, Mitchel Vaz, Van Vo and Eleen Tay.

 

Plus teams at in-game advertisers BidStack (including Director Matt Blackholler and Head of Operations Grace Cooke) and Gadsme (led by Head of Demand Antoine Clairet and Head of Supply Eashen Rhodes).

 

 

Outcome

 

The initiative succeeded in boosting the brand’s share of voice and drove a 14% increase in Cheesy Poppers orders during the 25 days of the campaign during the tournament.

 

The campaign led to gamers playing 100,000 active gaming hours, generated 8.4m media impressions and reached more than 1.1m unique consumers and engaged more than 1m gamers.

 

 

Comment

 

An inventive, smart and tightly targeted campaign which leveraged the growing crossover trend of blending real-world sports events and virtual gaming through in-game advertising linked to physical world events.