Due to the pandemic, food delivery apps experienced rapid growth especially among millennials, so Pizza Hut needed to create a user experience that would allure both families and individual eaters. The client ask was to create the Pizza Hut equivalent of the McDonald’s Monopoly partnership. The specific goals for entry form conversion were 34%, with game completion set at 60%, Email opt-ins had a 40% conversion rate and sales were +20%.
To create this modern version of gamification, we recognized the visual similarities between Pizza Hut and Hasbro Trivial Pursuit, a game where players challenge their knowledge against friends and family by contending to collect all six colored wedges. We combined this beloved game with people's love for pizza, gaming and trivia to create "Pizza Pursuit", the first ever mobile version of Trivial Pursuit. To play this digital trivia game, customers purchased a Pizza Hut pizza in the five participating markets - the United Kingdom, Brazil, El Salvador, Canada and South Africa. After you scanned the QR code on your box and entered the code on your receipt, an array of questions appeared in categories ranging from sports, film, music, geography, history, and most importantly – pizza! Players could compete with others up to a group of 6 or play solo, with the top two grand prize winners being eligible to win $10,000 each. The more questions you answered correctly, the more points you received along with an opportunity to win local, instant prizes. Pizza Pursuit launched November 8th and finished at the end of January 2022.
Our mission was to conquer the hearts (and phones) of young pizza lovers across the world (18–35-year-olds) to drive trial and loyalty through gamification. We did that by combining a beloved product (Stuffed Crust) with the launch of a mobile-first gamified experience. All in the hopes of developing a cutting-edge approach to engage consumers on a global scale, and ultimately deliver a year-on-year legacy that leaves room for innovation and optimization.
The first step was to ground the gamified experience CX, defined in Behavioral Economics, then make it applicable and scalable to multiple markets across channels. To do that we identified the behavior we wanted to induce, did a deep dive into what would motivate our audience, then turned behavioral prompts into action leveraging all of our core competencies ranging from strategy, creative, marketing sciences, partnerships, tech and prize fulfillment.
All leading up to an end-to-end creation of a branded game that leaned into what our pizza lovers enjoy the most and leveraged physical and digital interactions to attract and retain. By partnering with Hasbro, we tapped into their wildly popular game that seamlessly fit into our existing game construct. Then we developed a truly branded equity collaboration, utilized core assets, and connected with our audience over the combo of things they love—pizza and game night.
Pizza Hut needed to build awareness and loyalty in a way that would appeal to both families and solo eaters. They also wanted to find the pizza equivalent of McDonald’s Monopoly, leading us to look at opportunities with all of the gaming companies to find the one that was the most mutually beneficial. Pizza Pursuit saw great success for both brands exceeding expectations against all of their partnership objectives—
