PR case study: Tangerine Communications – Veganuary ‘now or never’

Tangerine Communications used Veganuary to help promote Pizza Hut Restaurants‘ offer on its vegan jackfruit pizza and increase sales of vegan products.

Campaign: Veganuary ‘now or never’
Client: Pizza Hut Restaurants
PR Team: Tangerine Communications
Timing: 1 January – present
Budget: N/A

Summary

This “Veganuary”, Tangerine launched Pizza Hut Restaurants’ new vegan jackfruit pizza, increasing sales of vegan products by 30%.

Tangerine was briefed to raise awareness of the new product and support the ‘41% off’ discount available in restaurants.

The product itself was launched for a limited time only, meaning that an instant sales lift was required to demonstrate success. After just 11 days, Pizza Hut Restaurants had sold over 10,000 vegan pizzas, exceeding initial targets and providing a like for like uplift in sales of vegan products of 20%, with over 17,000 units sold to date in just three weeks.

Objectives

• Raise awareness of Pizza Hut’s vegan offering
• Drive sales of the vegan jackfruit pizza

Strategy and implementation

Tangerine used insights from its previous limited time offer (LTO) campaigns to inform its approach.

The campaign was launched on New Year’s Day, with a ‘food porn’ video showcasing the pizza seeded out across all Pizza Hut Restaurant’s social channels.

A ‘vegan-o-meter’ was set-up in restaurants to track the number of vegans walking through the doors, with the added incentive that the vegan jackfruit pizza would become a permanent menu item if targets were met.

Tangerine issued the story to media, with substantial coverage appearing in UK press. The team even had fun with Piers Morgan, amplifying the launch of the jackfruit pizza by asking the social community to tag Piers in a tweet about the new product. Morgan responded and as a result of the online conversation, and the pizza appeared on Good Morning Britain.

The activity was underpinned by an ‘always on’ ad campaign, reaching 1.3m users via targeted ads across Instagram and Facebook in the first two weeks alone.

To further connect with vegans, the agency recruited 15 influencers to visit Pizza Hut and review the both the pizza and their experience.

How did Cision help with the campaign?

The team used Cision’s media database to identify and target crucial key sector specific and national media titles to approach for the campaign.

Results

• Campaign met target for number of vegans frequenting Pizza Hut’s restaurants
• Over 10,000 vegan pizzas sold in the first 11 days which has meant that the jackfruit pizza will indeed become a permanent staple on the  menu
• Coverage on Good Morning Britain and This Morning – watched by approximately 2.4m viewers
• Over 50 pieces of coverage secured including the Mirror Online, The Sun, Daily Star, MoneySavingExpert.com and LadBible.
• Social ads reached 1.3m users in first two weeks
• Reactive tweeting resulted in a 3.15m reach / 6.3k retweets / 38k engagements