What do you get when you take the food truck movement, savvy marketing and the growing frozen pizza market? Palermo Pizza's new online media-rich "Square vs. Slice" campaign.
Palermo's Pizza, the Milwaukee-based cafe and frozen pizza manufacturer, has launched Decision 2K10: Square vs. Slice, a national campaign to determine how America prefers to cut its pizza. "Candidates" Square and Slice are hot on the campaign trail with mobile food trucks sampling products and asking Americans to chew over the campaign issues and cast their votes.
But the votes won't necessarily decide whether Palermo's frozen pizzas will ultimately be pre-perforated as squares or triangular slices. Director of marketing Chris Dresselhuys said the campaign is meant to drive brand awareness for its pizza trucks, one of which has been in service for more than a year selling cooked-from-frozen slices at sports and college events. The mobile kitchen sampling, he said, drives frozen pizza sales at retail outlets.
"Mostly we were inspired by our concessions with our sports sponsorships," said Dresselhuys, who said the first mobile kitchen was built for concessions at University of Minnesota. "Those allowed us to put the premium quality product in (college sports fans) hands, and we're looking for additional opportunities to increase that outreach."
Now that the brand has two trucks in service, they will visit 70 events/locations throughout the summer, soliciting voter videos and input throughout the country, and posting these commentaries on a microsite. Dresselhuys said the trucks will be targeting family-heavy events, such as Nascar and state fairs.
Voters also can submit video testimonials, check out the official campaign blog, follow the candidates on Twitter and take pizza-ideology tests on the campaign's Facebook page. Results will be tallied in early November.
Palermo's frozen pizza is distributed nationally through regional retailers and Costco. The Southeast and Midwest are the brand's strongest markets.
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