The Challenge: Papa John’s Pizza has been mired in negative publicity for quite some time. The bad press however wasn’t buzzing about their product, but rather because of some perceived bad political remarks made by the founder, John Schnatter. I was tasked with showing that “Papa John’s Cares” and I created a campaign to show that he really did care. Since I was already working on a major initiative with Party City, I felt bringing tow large brands together would make for an even more substantial campaign.
The Idea: We launched “Papa John’s Cares“. We would shift the focus away from the recently completed election and partner with Party city to show a different side of Papa John’s and create a a campaign that was all about helping the hungry…with free pizza. The other main idea was to turn our existing and new fans into ardent brand ambassadors wherein they would feel so strongly about this campaign that they would defend the brand against the trolling that we knew would ensue.
The Execution: Using some of the most emotionally compelling images that I could find, I wanted to tug at the heart strings of people who could afford home delivery of pizza and let them know that there are millions of Americans who go hungry every day.
The Results: The most important result was that over $500,000 in pizza was delivered to hungry children. The social media results were off of the charts as well. Papa John’s had never seen numbers like this campaign drove. We reached over 5.2 Million people, generated almost 200,000 likes in 3 days, nearly 10,000 comments and an 800% increase in engagement in just 4 days!
