Has The Pizza Party Already Won?

On the heels of tonight’s Presidential debate, the biggest controversy may not be over Mitt or Barack’s economic policy–Pizza is seemingly center stage. Pizza Hut is running a social media campaign called “The Pizza Party,” which parallels the 2012 presidential campaign. With some clever videos on their YouTube channel, Pizza Hut may have stepped over the line when offering “free pizza for life” to anyone that will ask the candidates the question “sausage or pepperoni?” in tonight’s debate.

After tons of public outcry, Pizza Hut changed their contest rules to randomly select one registrant from their microsite to receive the pizza for life prize.

If you’re measuring PTAT (people talking about this), um, I’d say that Pizza Hut hit a home run. The campaign walks up to the line of “acceptable,” and people find that they are uncomfortable with it. It is interesting, however, that the political side of the campaign is an absolute circus, but when a corporation receives benefit from the spectacle, it is chastised.

So…what do you think? Did Pizza Hut go too far with this “stunt?”


Jeremy Floyd

Jeremy Floyd is the President at FUNYL Commerce. Formerly, he was the CEO and President of Lirio, Bluegill Creative, a marketing and communications firm in Knoxville, Tennessee. In addition to managing the digital strategies, Floyd was an adjunct professor for the University of Tennessee Chattanooga MBA program teaching digital strategies and social media. Floyd blogs at jeremyfloyd.com and tweets under the name @jfloyd. Jeremy is licensed to practice law in the State of Tennessee and holds a law degree from the University of Tennessee College of Law and a Bachelor of Arts degree from MTSU in English and Philosophy.

  • Lindsey Large

    Nice post….it goes along nicely with what I wrote about in this week’s blog http://lglarge.posterous.com/the-domino-effect. In my opinion Pizza Hut went too far in trying to meddle in the debate. Should’ve went with Domino’s….