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&pizza's 'Hallway Pizza Guy' shows the power of responsive marketing

Today's pizza marketing environment leaves little time for deliberation and this week, &pizza's quick, creative response to the so-called Hallway Pizza Guy meme at the Michael Cohen hearings on Capitol Hill provided a near-perfect lesson in how to do it right and rapidly.

March 1, 2019 by S.A. Whitehead — Food Editor, Net World Media Group

You never really know where your brand's next invaluable "semi-earned media" is going to come from, but &pizza is proving the value of staying alert in order to pounce on it for maximum exposure.

Such was the case for the D.C.-based brand after live video from Wednesday's Michael Cohen testimony on Capitol Hill featured someone in the background of a CBSN live shot gobbling down pizza from its clearly labeled &pizza  box. The brand recently opened a location outside the U.S. House of Representatives in the Raeburn Building.

Later Wednesday, Mashable referred to the young manas the "Hallway Pizza Guy," and he certainly provided a kind of comic relief to a very tense day of testimony.  Since then, a college student who has identified himself as "hallwaypizzaguy" on the sub-reddit, AMA, is causing a hilarious stream of conversation about &pizza, the hearing, pizza and other topics overnight.

But for &pizza, the whole circus around the video and its meme offspring meant action. Employees at the chain quickly went into action to use the incident as a launchpad for a quickly assembled brand campaign, according to the brand's CEO Michael Lastoria.

Lastoria said during in an interview with PizzaMarketplace that his team jumped on the media opp and even developed a Hallway Pizza special for the chain's 30 stores today, which included the items identified as being on the Hallway Pizza Guy's pie including barbecue sauce, spicy tomato, banana peppers, mozzarella, salami, pepperoni and Italian sausage. 

Long-story-short, the brand's moves and the Hallway Pizza Guy are both having quite a couple of days in media worldwide. DC Eater said that &pizza even started a GoFundMe campaign to "Buy the Pizza Intern More Pizza," with a tongue-in-cheek $10 goal, as the whole affair continued to explode on Twitter and elsewhere. 

Editor's note: For more on the subject and the latest about &pizza's growth, innovative communication initiatives and purposeful community connection, return here next Friday, March 8 when the QSRweb podcast features &pizza CEO Michael Lastoria as its featured guest. 

Images: &pizza via Twitter

About S.A. Whitehead

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Pizza Marketplace and QSRweb editor Shelly Whitehead is a former newspaper and TV reporter with an affinity for telling stories about the people and innovative thinking behind great brands.