It didn't take long for Wenda Harris Millard - part of the original cast of DoubleClick - to stir things up in her new role as Chief Advertising Sales Officer at
Yahoo! If you've been to the Yahoo! homepage today, you know what I'm talking about - the Pizza Hut ad. A pizza pushes through the middle of the screen, gets
sprinkled with pepperoni and sausage and flies over to the square ad for Pizza Hut Ultimate Lover's Pizza on the right side of the page.
There it rests until users click to see the toppings
sprinkle on the pizza. Afterward, users have the option to click through to the Pizza Hut PH899.com site, which ties into the $8.99 Unbeatable Pizzas, Unbelievable Prices campaign currently running
offline.
According to company officials, PH899.com was created specifically for Web-savvy pizza fans. Visitors to PH899.com are privy to coupons, value updates, an online game and the chance to
win "free pizza for a year." The campaign was developed by Yahoo!, Pizza Hut, and The Digital Edge, the interactive agency for Pizza Hut.
In addition to the homepage, the promotion will be
featured throughout the Yahoo! network. As Randy Gier, chief marketing officer at Pizza Hut explained, "Pizza eaters are a broad group, and it's important to reach them in the areas relevant to their
lives. The Internet is helping us do that."
Hey, they caught my attention. The ad is certainly innovative (if a little reminiscent of the Ford Explorer ad from a few months ago), and the Yahoo/Pizza Hut team should definitely be applauded with lots of
clicks. Of course, the measure of this campaign's success will be not how many people click, but how many pizzas are sold as a result, but we'll wait and see on that.