Sausage Or Pepperoni?

When I heard the morning radio at FM99.9 yesterday, I just heard the story that I’ve read several days ago, it’s Pizza Hut’s campaign about the presidential debate: Pizza Hut claims that if anyone has the courage to ask the candidates in the debate: Sausage or pepperoni ?In terms of their choices of pizza toppings, he/she would win lifelong pizza offers or cash rewards.

I just about this in Adage last week and it seems to generate both positive and negative feedbacks. Gawker has an article calling it “Just Make a Mockery of the American Democratic System on Live TV” while Slate’s Andrew McCarthy wrote a criticism of the campaign, saying that between this and Big Bird, the whole race appeared to be “devolving into some sort of bizarre episode of ‘The Bachelor.’ Some PR professional say it’s “a stupid idea”:”Is this really what we want our candidates to be talking about? Why muck up a serious debate with silly questions?” I also saw a lot of arguments online, some take the side of Pizza Hut, and some just keep saying it’s “Stupid”.

However as I heard from the host yesterday’s morning, he enjoyed this a lot and even said that’s the “only thing he expect tonight”. His words must be exaggerated, however I do agree Pizza Hut has its rationale as to take advantage of a democratic process to place a product placement. It creates an immediate discussion in the middle of a Presidential campaign that most Americans are focused on right now.

Similarly, 7-11 has done a small campaign associated with this presidential election. During this season, customer can select an Obama, Romney or a “nonpartisan cup”. However it hasn’t created much of the online engagement but it will help make a poll that are claimed to have predicted the result of the election since 2000.

Those campaigns obviously assemble that famous JetBlue’s “Leave the country” campaign since its also associated with the presidential election, which usually will help those brands including Pizza hut, seven-eleven and JetBlue lot’s of buzz. For seven-eleven, it’s more like a tradition to make a prediction, and for Pizza Hut, the only thing that we can see is a lot of free PR for them.