We are digitally heavy but are experimenting with TV again: Pizza Hut CMO

With the consumer landscape evolving rapidly, several legacy brands that leaned heavily on traditional media are now veering towards digital. One among them has been Pizza Hut, which has shifted 100% of its marketing and advertising spending on digital.

Neha, Chief Marketing Officer at Pizza Hut, talks to e4m on the shift, the brand’s recent initiatives and much more.

Excerpts from the conversation:

How has Pizza Hut as a brand evolved over the years?

Pizza Hut is a legacy, and by the time it came to India, it was already a legacy brand. In the first 15 years, our focus was to establish an experience brand. From the beginning, we focused on serving ‘cravable’ food and that has continued to be the hallmark Pizza Hut experience. But over the years, there has been a conscious movement towards becoming HMR (Home Meal Replacement). In the last 3 years of the pandemic, the focus towards pivoting to HMR has accelerated strongly.

The pandemic had a major impact on the food and hospitality sector. What was your mantra to sail through those difficult times?

I think what comes with a legacy brand is that your foundation is extremely strong, you do not have to re-evaluate your brand standards because you are operating at a high standard. As the market evolved due to the pandemic, we had to take measures like contactless deliveries, but because our foundation was strong, we were able to adapt to the changes. I give a lot of credit to our franchise for holding ground. 

We focused from the beginning that quarantine time can be quality time with your loved ones. One of the first campaigns we ran was ‘It's quality time, not quarantine’. There was a silver lining to look at where families are coming together. When there is such a situation happening around you, are you as a brand listening to what the consumer wants? We felt the consumer wants ease. We tried to do something for consumers whether it is a dine-in experience or delivery. If the pizza can bring a smile to your face, then why not?

Following up on the above question, we saw that PH is heavily investing in-home delivery system. Talk to us about that. Are people in the habit of home delivery even after normalcy has come in?

We have an ecosystem set up right from the delivery person to the facilities. So we always had a Pizza Hut app, but we needed to upgrade the app experience for the people. So this year we have launched a new app. The third thing was from the media perspective. During Covid, consumers were spending most of their time on devices consuming a lot of content. We literally shifted almost 100% of our spending to digital to make sure we are where the consumer is. The fourth thing is we were already following very strong standard operating procedures. We dialled up the trust with trust in every bite. We wanted to dial up communication around it. The last thing is value. The group size increases during the pandemic. We took the opportunity to provide consumers with abundant value.

Broadly, about 70-75 % of our business is coming from delivery and the remaining 25-30% comes from dine-in.

What are the recent initiatives that the brand has taken to keep up with the evolving consumers?

I don’t think anyone can say they have cracked the Gen Z. The one thing that helped us to cater to the Gen Z is our insight team.

I think today it is a partnership in learning. I engage with the Gen Z, they feed me back and then I build more.

How do you think MarTech is helping the brand? What elements are you bringing in to connect with your audiences and get into their psych to serve them better?

The first piece is our app itself, it is important to know that the consumer is only talking to me. It is the aspect that we have gone after maniacally. The downloads have been stupendous.

We are very committed as an organization to MarTech and we have put this into practice with a MarTech calendar. If I know there is a certain intervention that the technology team is giving me, I’ll make a campaign around that so technology and marketing are in sync.

In our dining too, we have something called BYOD which is ‘bring your own device’. 

The last thing is the digital landscape of media. One of the things that we do is ensure that we spend at least 5-10% of our media budget on experimentation within the digital landscape. One of the recent experiments is investing in digital radio and audio. We have also realized that we have to go where the consumer is. We have been investing in payment apps such as Google Pay and PhonePe.

How is Pizza Hut harnessing the reach and popularity of digital to drive footfalls and brand recall?

When you are spending 90% on digital for brand awareness, we are not only using digital for performance marketing but also for all our campaigns. We are collaborating with an organization called Quantum Media to do media modelling for us.

We have become very digitally heavy and it is funny to say that we are experimenting with TV again.

With so many homegrown brands coming of age, how is Pizza Hut trying to leave a mark in the audience's mind?

In the last couple of years, there has been enough market created for everyone to exist. The homegrown brand has certain cities or localities but we are a brand of scale. We are about 700+ stores. We have a responsibility to provide an experience across the city, 

What are your future plans for the Indian market?

We are very aggressive in this market. At this point last year, we were at 500 stores, now we are at 700+ stores, and we have added 80 new cities. If I look at the horizon of the next 5 years, I see us continuing to be on a very agile and fast growth path.