We’ll eat our Hut

I noticed your recent interest in Pizza Hut and our Pasta Hut campaign (MW 18 June). Of course I understand your views on our campaign differ from my own but thought you might be interested to hear a bit more about our rationale behind it.

In October last year, we launched the “Pasta Hut” campaign with the main purpose of encouraging talkability around Pizza Hut. We wanted to highlight the many changes that have taken place over recent years, including our extensive restaurant refurbishment programme, introducing a contemporary new look and feel, and a wider menu with our new Tuscani pasta menu.

As a long established and much loved brand, we knew that the temporary name change would get people talking and we were more than happy to hear everyone’s opinion, whether good or bad. We were clear throughout the campaign that the name change was for a trial period, and we were really pleased with how it went. As a result of the campaign, not only did our pasta sales increase fivefold, but our key brand attributes around “variety” and “health” improved, and more than 100,000 of our customers engaged with us online.

Since then, we have continued to position Pizza Hut as a great place to get together with a new campaign which is based around real-life moments that everyone can relate to. It places Pizza Hut as the solution to a wide range of occasions for a varied audience. The term “… Hut?” is a simple verbal call to action and I can assure you that there are no plans to change our name from Pizza Hut.

Claudia Nicholls-Magielsen
Marketing director restaurants
Pizza Hut UK