Pizza Pizza - Marketing Techniques

Marketing Techniques

Pizza Pizza currently uses the self-explanatory slogans "Hot & Fresh" and "Ontario's #1 Pizza!" However, perhaps better known still is the chain's Toronto phone number, (416) 967–1111, the last four digits pronounced "eleven-eleven" to rhyme with "seven". The company claims that its early adoption of the centralized single-number ordering system, and its subsequent use and heavy promotion of this rhyming phone number, helped the chain to grow and soon dominate the Ontario pizza market.

In other areas, the local number usually ends in the "11-11" pattern to match a standard jingle used in the chain's radio advertisements. Pizza Pizza has also registered "967–1111" and its variants as trademarks. "967–1111" is registered in Canada under registration number TMA428709.

Besides its memorable jingle, Pizza Pizza has laid claim to being first – or among the first – to:

• use a pizza delivery bag
• develop the centralized, computerized call centre
• place advertising on the spines of telephone directories
• advertise using Post-It notes on newspapers, and via coupons on parking receipts
• use virtual advertising, as one of several such advertisers during Global's coverage of Super Bowl XXXVI
• put pineapple on a pizza

It has also recently secured product placement on the television series Degrassi: The Next Generation.

Outside of Ontario, Pizza Pizza has benefited from various pop-culture references. Toronto musicians Moxy Früvous mention it in their song "King of Spain". A chapter of Michael Moore's book Downsize This! advises illegal immigrants who want to sneak into Canada at Niagara Falls to memorize Pizza Pizza's Toronto number to appear Canadian. Moore cites Pizza Pizza as Canada's "national pizza chain" when at the time of publishing they did not have any locations outside of eastern Canada.

"Pizza! Pizza!" is also recognized, primarily in the United States, as the slogan for another pizza franchise, Little Caesars. The companies are not affiliated and in fact compete in many areas of Canada. Little Caesars has been prohibited from using it as a slogan in Canada, as part of Pizza Pizza's court defence of the trademark and the great possibility of confusion between the two firms. Pizza Pizza sold rights to the use of its "Pizza Pizza" radio jingle and slogan to Little Caesar's in 1979.

Pizza Pizza's canned Coca-Cola products have a gold top instead of the more conventional silver top. This is so that it is obvious whether or not Coca-Cola products being sold by Pizza Pizza franchisees have been purchased through the Pizza Pizza commisary or not, for control purposes.