• by Steve Ellwanger , February 26, 2020

Running a 30-second Super Bowl spot to generate awareness for a new service—Little Caesars’ launch of home delivery—is one thing. But how do you get nearly 5 billion people to repeat your commercial messaging for several weeks after the spot has run?

For Little Caesars, the answer was an integrated campaign that included video-saturated platform TikTok.

The 60-year-old pizza chain’s first-ever Super Bowl ad offered a hilarious take on the notion of “Best Thing Since…” Upon answering the door for a Little Caesars delivery, a woman exclaims, “That’s the best thing since sliced bread!”

When word of the “best thing” analogy spreads to the headquarters of the fictitious Sliced Bread company, its management (led by “The Office” star Rainn Wilson) erupts in a maniacal frenzy at the prospect of new competition.

In the followup, four TikTok influencers were chosen to video themselves answering their door to a Little Caesars delivery. Their voices are initially overdubbed in a Valley Girl accent as they say “Little Caesars Delivery? That’s the best thing since…” before they provide their own distinct and humorous spins on the answer.

TikTok users were encouraged to follow suit and lipsync to the exact same voiceover, then film their own response.

“An announcement of this kind is so significant for our business, so it’s all about awareness at a level much higher than a traditional kind of initiative we might have for a [limited-time offer] or something of that nature,” Greg Hamilton, vice president of media at Little Caesars, tells Marketing Daily.

“In many ways, the challenge is not only with finding eyeballs, but finding eyeballs in an environment where they’re engaged with your content, so that they actually take something away. Users could literally engage with our content and use our audio, which included the branding and the message all right at the front,” Hamilton adds.

As of today, there had been 4.9 billion views of the #BestThingSince hashtag, as calculated by TikTok.

"The Best Thing Since" campaign was created by Little Caesars agency of record McKinney, which partnered on the TikTok execution with Blue Hour Studios—the joint venture content agency of Horizon Media and Group Nine Media.

“We wanted to find a very natural way to bring to life the playfulness and humor that came out of the spot,” says Taylor M. Gerard, Blue Hour Studios creative director. “A native way to do that on TikTok was the voiceover format that was also a little funky and weird, which made people play with it.”

While some franchisees of the privately held Little Caesars have dabbled with home delivery options over the years, the company recently decided to partner exclusively with DoorDash for national delivery.