Commentary

Crowdsourcing: Full Circle

Papa John's pizza by and for the people

This summer Papa John's Pizza unleashed a crowdsourcing campaign that tested the R&D and marketing chops of its most ambitious customers. Consumers were asked to create and submit recipes for interesting new pizzas. The top three pizzas were then put on the regular menu and finalists had one month to hustle up sales of their pizza creations, mainly through social media and PR. The top-selling pizza earned $10,000 for its creator/marketer and $480 worth of free pizza every year for 50 years.

In a lucky break for the pizza chain, three distinctly different people emerged as finalists. Two of the contenders had youth, sizzle and sex appeal on their side. The third had good intentions and people sense. Guess which one won.

The marketing effort, dubbed Papa's Specialty Pizza Challenge, began in April with a promotion asking people to submit new pizza recipes via Facebook, along with 250-word descriptions of what made their pies unique. More than 12,000 submissions flowed in and the company chose 10 semifinalists based on taste, creativity and the quality of the description. Of those, three pizzas were chosen by a judging panel that included Food Network star Ted Allen; Rich Eisen of the NFL Network; and Adam Kuban, of the Serious Eats blog. Shortly after, the three finalists traveled to Papa John's headquarters in Louisville to introduce their pizzas to the company's corporate staff.

Then it was in the customers' hands. Finalists got $1,000 each for promotion starting in July and their pizzas hit menus in August.

Blair Dial, 29, a blonde marketing pro from the Chicago area, pushed her pizza, "The Big Bonanza," heavy on bacon and barbecue sauce. Another, 22-year-old volunteer firefighter Kendra Chapman with flaming red hair, hailed from Georgia. Her pizza, "Workin' Fire" boasted spicy meat and peppers. Then there was Barbara Hyman, 51, a tanned brunette holistic healer from Los Angeles, who immediately pledged to donate $1,000 to the National Wildlife Federation if she won. Her chicken-and-ham pizza was called "Cheesy Chicken Cordon Bleu."

"We were surprised and excited by the ways the finalists used social media to execute three classic positioning approaches," says Jim Ensign, Papa John's vice president of digital marketing. The barbecue pizza's approach was a focus on the product, including an endorsement by a pork producers association. The spicy pizza campaign zeroed in on the person behind the product - the young firefighter. And the Cordon Bleu pizza played up a charitable aspect, he says. Each finalist pizza had a dedicated Facebook page and Papa John's site kept track of "like" votes for each of those pizza pages.

So, what happened?

Based on social media indicators, the barbecue pizza should have won by a landslide. Dial posted on her pizza's Facebook page one to three times a day, with games, contests and jokes. By Aug. 12, her site had more than 1,000 "likes," while her rivals had only about 500 each. On the company site, 1,351 people voted for her pizza by the end of August.

After that came Chapman, the firefighter, who anchored her page with a striking photo of herself. She posted about every other day and at month's end 1,005 users voted for her pizza on the Papa John site.

Hyman, in contrast, seemed to use Facebook only as a back-up communication tool; in August she posted only three times. But she included her charity's name in her Facebook title, calling it "Papa John's Cheesy Chicken Cordon Bleu for Gulf Coast Animals." Her pizza got 928 votes on the Papa page.

And the winner was ... Hyman. In fact, Hyman's pizza sales jumped ahead from the start and didn't relinquish that position for the whole month. By Aug. 10, her pizza had sold 45 percent of the customer-designed pizzas, the spicy pizza tallied 31 percent and the barbecue pizza snagged 24 percent. Those percentages stayed about the same until the end, per a company rep. In all, about 108,000 Cordon Bleu pizzas were sold, about 74,000 spicy Workin' Fire pizzas were sold and about 57,000 Big Bonanza barbecue pizzas were sold.

To put those sales figures in perspective, the company says that Hyman's pizza sold " in comparable numbers to our Spinach Alfredo pizza, one of our very popular regular menu items."

In hindsight, Ensign says Hyman's site, pitch and pizza had two powerful hooks. One, the Cordon Bleu name was familiar and easy to remember; two, her cause was framed as a way to help animals harmed in the BP oil spill, which had a timely, emotional pull.

The competition offers lessons for any crowdsourcing campaign. Rather than concentrating on higher numbers of social media fans, Hyman intuitively sought out higher engagement - both online and offline. For instance, she made alliances with a local Best Buy store and a group of Southern California Papa John's franchisees. They helped her promote her pizza and pledged to match her charity donation if she won, boosting the total to $3,000.

During a road trip to Florida, she found people and small businesses near Papa John's outlets that were willing to distribute flyers for her. The in-person interactions helped her adapt her pitch. "People didn't seem to care about the money I could win," Hyman says. "But their interest peaked when I talked about helping wildlife covered with oil. People really want to save animals."

For its part, Papa John's learned how social media fits in as one part of a larger whole. "While Facebook contributed somewhat to the success of the winner, it was an even bigger factor as a way for us [to use the contest to] engage people in our entire menu of specialty pizzas," says Ensign. "Social media will continue to be a growing part of our marketing strategy."

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