Background

In summer 2022, with inflation raging, Pizza Pizza launched the Fixed-Rate Pizza: a four-topping XL pizza for a price, $16.99, guaranteed not to rise for 12 months. It took off immediately and Pizza Pizza extended the offer from 12 months to 18. In that time, Pizza Pizza sold more than 2 million Fixed-Rate Pizzas for almost $35 million in sales. Nobody wanted to lose that boost.

Inflation however was still raging in 2024, the cost of ingredients had risen dramatically. While the Fixed-Rate Pizza stayed at $16.99, other competitors had jacked up prices by an average of 8.4%. Pizza Pizza’s franchisees, mainly small entrepreneurs, felt the pinch.

Idea

The price of the next iteration would need to go up by $1. It’d still be a great deal – a better deal than when the Fixed-Rate Pizza started, if you factor in inflation – but it needed to be handled carefully. How could we reinvigorate the Fixed-Rate Pizza, at a higher price, without losing the momentum of the previous 18 months?

For this year’s offering, we transformed Pizza Pizza into a "bank" where friendly staff helped Canadians find the best pizza rates. The spot aired on television, and testimonials from satisfied Pizza Bank customers were cut into bite-sized social content. The revised offer was also promoted through digital out-of-home advertising across the country, in Pizza Pizza’s flyers, and through programmatic display advertising.

Results

Our goal was to maintain the sales momentum of the Fixed-Rate Pizza even after raising the price by $1. Not only did we maintain that momentum, but we also actually improved on 2023’s already stellar results.

In the first 12 weeks of the campaign, we sold more than 350,000 Fixed-Rate Pizzas at the new 2024 rate, improving on units sold year-over-year in every week since the second week of the campaign. In fact, our unit sales have averaged 9% higher after the price increase compared with the four weeks before.