Gen-Z Male Media Opps: Pizza Hut debuts new campaign (Score 70)

Pizza Hut (PH) announced a new brand campaign called "Newstalgia." The pizza restaurant will offer limited-edition pizza boxes that has an augmented reality version of the classic Pac-Man game, that users can play on their smartphones. Players will also be able to share their scores on Twitter to be entered into a contest to win a custom Pac-Man game cabinet. The campaign will be supported by a TV spot featuring PH's new spokesperson, comedian Craig Robinson. 

According to iSpot, PH spent about $29.8m on national TV ads YTD, a 97% decrease from $58.8m spent during the same time period of 2020. Full-year spend equaled $216m in 2020, a slight 4% increase from $206.3m in 2019. This year, it placed ads during programming such as "NFL Football," "College Basketball," "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit," "The Super Bowl Today" and "Friends." 

Magellan reports PH placed approximately 100 podcast ads over the last year. 

Per Pathmatics, PH earned 709.8m impressions through Facebook ads (40%), desktop video ads (29%), Instagram ads (16%), desktop display ads (6%), mobile video ads (5%) and mobile display ads (3%). It placed the majority (96%) of these ads site direct onto sites such as facebook.com, youtube.com, instagram.com, nfl.com and hulu.com. It placed the remainder (4%) indirectly through Google AdX+AdSense and Verizon Media onto sites such as yahoo.com, msn.com, nj1015.com, bleacherreport.com and nhl.com. It spent around $5.8m on digital display ads YTD, more than double the $2.3m spent in this channel during the same time period of 2020. Full-year spend equaled $23m in 2020, a significant increase from $10.5m in 2019. 

Sellers-- PH mainly targets Gen-Z men through digital display ads. It has been increasing digital spend while decreasing national TV ad spend over the last couple of years. It still invest heavily in national TV ads, and it seems to target a slightly older millennial, still male, audience through the channel. It also invests in OOH, print, radio and local broadcast TV ads, per Kantar. Click here, to use PH's location finder to see where you may be able to provide local ad space. Sellers should reach out to secure possible last-minute campaign ad dollars. 

Agency & martech readers-- I believe the only agency PH works with is creative AOR GSD&M. PH brought in CMO George Felix over a year ago, so this account is likely stable. You will probably have better luck looking for work elsewhere.