Marketing
Cicada ... pizza?
May 21, 2021
If you live in any of the Midwestern and Northeastern U.S. states where those creepy little faulty flyers known as cicadas — especially those of the 17-year Brood X variety — are emerging, you're likely feeling something in the pit of your stomach about the buzzy bugs right about now. It's unlikely though that your stomach is urging you to put a few of the critters on your pizza as a crunchy, bead-y eyed addition.
Yet, one Cincinnati, Ohio-based pizza chain has built a particularly inventive media campaign around just that idea that it's hoping will not only sell pies, but build community connection to the brand as well. The Cincinnati area is one of the areas where Brood X emerged this week so along with it, Northern Kentucky-based chain, Snappy Tomato Pizza, wanted to build a little buzz — literally and figuratively, in this case — through a campaign connected to the phenomenon.
The brand not only partnered with a local hospital, The Christ Hospital Health Network, to celebrate babies born during the emergence, but also created an incredibly funny and successful spoof of the Snappy Tomato jingle from the 1980s back for another round to publicize the campaign, which we've included here.
Snappy Tomato Pizza Director of Marketing Andy Ritter said the emergence of the funky bugs and the funky '80s video is all in fun and stressed that, of course, the brand does not and will not put any cicadas on its pies.
"We dusted off the old seven-inch, 45 rpm from 34 years ago and had it digitized for today's play," Ritter said of the spoofed jingle. "The song sounds as fun today as it did the first time I heard it. Now after listening to it again and again, I have to try and get that rhythm out of my head. We are excited to gift the newbies born at The Christ Hospital a one-of-a-kind cicada onesie to help remember their coinciding arrival with the cicadas of 2021."
Snappy Tomato Pizza and The Christ Hospital Health Network are also running a Facebook contest encouraging tri state residents to share what they really think about the return of the Brood X cicadas using only GIFS. The social media contest will run through the end of May. Two winners will be randomly selected to win a Snappy Cicada Pizza T-shirt and Snappy Bucks for a free pizza pie. One grand prize winner will be chosen to win the cicada shirt, a free Snappy Tomato Pizza and the revolutionary Bug Screen Pod from Under the Weather to help protect them from the cicadas.
Snappy Tomato Pizza has 45 stores across Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee and New Mexico
