The Web Marketing Association is proud to present this 2022 Internet Advertising Competition Award for
Outstanding Achievement in Internet Advertising.
Best Food Industry Integrated Ad Campaign, Best Of Show Integrated Ad Campaign
No other pizza has developed as much of a cult-like following as Little Caesars Pretzel Crust. And ever since it left our menu, fanatics have gone to great lengths to bring it back. Some went as far as freezing pizzas to enjoy months later. Others started Facebook groups and online petitions. One fan even picketed outside the company headquarters (yes, really).
So, when announcing its return, we decided to use these pretzel-crazed maniacs to our advantage, turning them into 100% unpaid social media influencers who would talk about our product for us 24/7.
We began by hiding secret codes across both the digital and real worlds — codes that would inevitably #UnlockPretzelCrust and awesome pretzel-themed prizes. Over the course of three weeks, we hid codes in crop circles. At hockey games. In our commercials. We hid codes in our code. In our posts. Heck, we even hid them in the middle of nowhere.
Once fans knew these codes could be anywhere, suddenly they were talking about them everywhere — on their feeds and even deep within the threads on Reddit. And once we saw that, we decided to go where few brands dare to go, and hid them there, too, inside a billion-pixel Pretzel Crust photo hunt.
So, did it work? Well, let’s just say that after 72 million social impressions and a 700% increase in conversation, Little Caesars pizza sales soared. And it was all thanks to a group of “influencers” as unique as our pizza itself.
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