Pizza Advertising: Your Ads on the Boxes

The advertising landscape is constantly evolving, and with traditional methods like billboards and transit ads losing their effectiveness, advertisers are seeking more innovative ways to reach their target audiences. As consumer behaviors shift, particularly with more people spending time at home, it has become essential for brands to find creative solutions that engage consumers in their personal spaces. One such innovative strategy is pizza box advertising—a tactic that delivers your message directly into the hands of customers, in the comfort of their homes.

Agencies will be required to change their advertising method. The traditional out-of-home advertising in malls, at bus shelters, will be fast replaced by in-home advertising. The lockdowns will keep people more distanced and inside their homes. Hence, the best ways to reach the audience will be to take your advertising message to them indoors.

Adzze has been re-imaging the advertising tactics and adapting to a more sensitive message. The operation team has working on extending its capabilities to offer advertising concepts that can reach the consumers at their safest place: at home. One of these methods uses pizza boxes as advertising space. Think of this as small moving billboard that that consumers will receive in their home. Surveys indicated that this type of tactics can trigger an 80% recall rate (8 out of 10 individuals recall seeing an ad on the pizza box) with an average ROI of 150%. This means, for every 1 dollar the advertiser invested in a pizza box advertising campaign, they received at least additional 2.5 dollars of sales. For more details in the article Estimating the ROI of Pizza Box Marketing.

A 2015 research showed that millennial do not respond to ads. If this scenario is to play out in most of the period ahead, it will be a nightmare for advertisers. Fortunately, advertisers have access to innovative ad avenues like pizza advertising. Through the medium, the advertisers are able to overcome the challenges that traditional media experience.

Why is pizza advertising unique?

Traditional media, and even a majority of the new media, relies on the same playbook to reach target audience. Typically, ad agencies create beautiful messages and place them on billboards, TV and other platforms. For TV advertising, the messages play more than ten times per day for a whole month. On the other hand, billboards can display a single ad for three months or more. This kind of monotony and repetitiveness is what gets on the nerves of the audience. The targeting methods of pizza ads is discussed in this article: Pizza Box Advertising: Effectively Reach Consumers at Home.

Interestingly, here is where pizza advertising diverges from traditional media and other advertising alternatives. Unlike traditional media that relies on repetitiveness, advertising using pizza boxes is one off but more effective. Notably, an advertiser prints the message and the business logo on the top side of the pizza box. Then, the advertiser delivers the pizza boxes to the targeted pizzerias. From there, buyers will pick their pizzas, or the pizzeria will deliver them to the buyers’ homes. When the buyer opens the pizza to eat, he/she interacts with the ad on the box in a unique manner.

Pizza Advertising: place your message in front of your audience

Some buyers keep pizza boxes in the house for a week. All this time, the customer will see the message on the box. Interestingly, all this exposure is likely to convince the customer to make a direct action. As a result, pizza advertising appears to be best suited for campaigns to grow brand visibility.

Recently, the Missouri Departament of Transportation run a state wide campaign promoting their ” drive sober” message in the pizza boxes: Box Top Advertising: Pizza Deliveries Are Saving Lives.

Advertisers will have to focus on Stay-at-Home Ad options

The after-effect of this development will be an unavoidable reduction in patronage for the billboard advertising companies. Billboard companies will eventually have to sit it out with the hope that they can still reclaim their market share in the end. However, smaller businesses and other brands that depended on their strategic displays to market their brands may not be so patient. Just as major clients like hoteliers, airlines, and cinemas are on pause mode, smaller brands are quickly pulling away and leveraging alternative media and in-home advertising to preach their brands.

Billboard companies may not only be counting their losses in billions of dollars, many of their customers might have moved on to embrace other more pocket-friendly advertising alternatives. These alternatives are indoor-directed, and have proven to be equally effective, perhaps even more effective than the conventional outdoor methods. Aside from the fact that they are more expensive, it is difficult to track engagement for out-of-home ads. In fact, small businesses face more challenges trying to get a marketing space in the highly competitive ad industry.

Pizza Box Marketing

Indeed, millennial are huge fans of pizza. Therefore, using pizza boxes to advertise could be the best means to reach this demographic. Every time they buy the product, they get to interact with your brand. Important to note, the fact that your brand appears on pizza boxes gives a sweet impression to the audience. This way, the audience, especially millennial will respond to your ads better.

Advertising on pizza boxes is one of the most straightforward yet successful marketing techniques. The advertiser places the logo of the brand that needs visibility as well as the message on pizza boxes. Then, the distribution of boxes to pre-selected pizzerias, where a specific demographic of customers buy pizza. This article discuss how it can overcome digital ads: Pizza Box Marketing can be an Alternative to Overcome Pitfalls of Digital Ads

The primary trick at work here is that putting an ad on a pizza box is unconventional. There are advantages in comparison to traditional media. Typically, pizza boxes come with the logo of the pizzeria and a nice photo of a sliced pizza. Imagine the shock of a customer who finds your brand on the box instead of the familiar image! This element of surprise ensures that the audience does not ignore the message. Ultimately, conversion rates and brand visibility are very high.

On the contrary, advertising pizza is low cost. With the same rates for one 30-second TV commercial, a business can produce close 350,000 pizza boxes. These can be sent to about 200 locations where each customer will have at least 30 minutes of peaceful time with the message.

Pizza Box Marketing and Stay-at-Home Advertising

The end of coronavirus is much anticipated across borders but for the foreseeable future, the impact of the pandemic will not be palatable. One thing is certain; the outbreak of the virus will not only cause disruptions of businesses and fall in revenues but will also open new ad perhaps better dimensions to doing business, especially for the advertising industry.

As example, during the pandemic there is an interesting increase that has been recorded by restaurants and food delivery services across the country. This means, it creates a new demand and opportunity for in-home advertising since most Americans are working from home.

Adzze has been working with its clients to adapt to a more sensitive message. The team has been extending the capabilities to offer advertising options that can reach the consumers at their safest place: at home. One of these concepts uses pizza boxes as advertising space that gets delivered at the homes of the audience.

The advertisement is printed on pizza boxes (or pizza box top) and shipped to the pizzerias that the advertiser selected. The advertising pizza venues distribute to the consumers locally or they deliver at their homes. These venues are recognized pizza chains, so the advertiser has exposure to reputable brands. The pizza box ads get delivered in the hands of the consumers at their homes reaching on average 45 min of brand exposure. Sometimes the consumer leaves the pizza in the fridge generating additional exposure. On average, each Pizza Box Advertising venue delivers 2,000 pizza box top ads per month with an estimate 1.8M impressions/month.