Little Caesars wanted to become the Official Pizza of the NHL for the 2020/21 season. But, the season was ...different. There would be no Canadian fans in the stands. So, with a limited budget and a desire to create buzz, all while driving Little Caesars’ delivery business, they needed to move beyond the expected rink board and connect with pizza-loving hockey fans in a truly innovative way. So, No Fixed Address set out to do that with the creative use of technology and social amplification.

Friday and Saturday nights were already solid sales nights. They also knew they didn’t have enough budget to drive awareness from Sunday to Thursday. So, they decided to focus their efforts on one night of the week: Wednesday.

They would bring the excitement of being at a sponsored arena to consumers every Wednesday night, in an engaging way born of fan culture and truly representative of the Little Caesars brand. If they were able to turn Wednesday night into the best night of the week for hockey (and pizza) fans, they knew the program would be a success.

Introducing Pizza Night Hockey: all the excitement of the arena experience, brought to your home every Wednesday night.

Their first campaign element, “Naming Rights”, invited consumers to sell the rights to their living room, basement, or wherever they enjoy the game by signing a digital contract on www.pizzanighthockey.ca. Once signed, Canadians gained access to exclusive Wednesday deals for every remaining Pizza Night Hockey of the 2020/21 NHL season.

Then, they wanted to expand the brand’s presence in the Little Caesars Hockey Rooms across the country. Through social media, the brand gave fans the opportunity to ‘renegotiate’ their contracts. These real-time digital auctions allowed fans to name their price, in pizza, to add Little Caesars branding in their home.

Then, between March 17 and April 22, when customers ordered on a Wednesday, a special contest sticker was placed on the box containing a seat number and a unique registration code. Consumers were able to use their codes to go online for a chance to score instant prizes and weekly grand prizes from Little Caesars and NHLShop.ca. Then, they tuned in on Wednesday nights for the featured NHL game where the brand would announce the grand prize winner live on the broadcast, just like at a live game.

Little Caesars saw a 21% increase in store traffic on Wednesdays, a 15% increase in sales, and a 10% increase in delivery. On social media, they saw an astronomical increase of 8.6x in follower growth and an incredible 17.7% of overall engagement on their platforms.

And, as a nice feather in any Canadian marketer’s cap, the successful kick-off of Pizza Night Hockey in Canada resulted in it being adapted by the Little Caesars U.S. team.

They used their best web and UI tricks to mock up the most unofficially official sponsorship negotiation and contract signing process on their campaign site. Then, they leveraged instant-win mechanics to recreate the excitement of live, in-seat giveaways at home. In short, they used digital to replicate what social distancing took away from fans.

They wanted the experience to feel like an NHL Contract negotiation, signing, and arena branding, but it needed to be easy, fun and rewarding for the fans. They used UX and UI to bolster the official-ness of their microsite experience.

Phase 1 social promoted LC Pizza Night Hockey and announced the fans could get “paid” for naming rights to their personal hockey dens. These social media posts drove fans to their microsite. There, users could sign their contract, giving LC naming rights to their living/family/TV rooms, garages and dens. Once the virtual dotted line was signed, a templated social post was generated for them to share on their own channels. This amplification caught the eyes of more fans and drove more traffic to the site.

The site featured a searchable map on which users could explore ‘sponsored’ rooms all around North America. Fans could also download templates with which to deck out their new “arenas”. For those who wanted to go a little bigger, they created an e-commerce platform that let them choose from personalized LC Pizza Night Hockey signs that would be delivered to their homes. The data being provided by initial sign-up meant no extra steps needed.

All contracts come with a little renegotiation, so they built that in too. Through Instagram comments and DMs, their real-time digital auctions drove further engagement and amplification; they even got some influencers in on the game. All this drove even more fans, from across the country to their campaign page.

From March 17 to April 22, Phase 2 was launched with a move from a purely digital realm to an integrated push They created an ‘at-home’ arena experience in which customers who ordered their pies on a Wednesday night got a special contest sticker on their box. That box contained a unique “seat number” and PIN. And just like the seat giveaways at an in-person NHL game, fans could go back to the site and enter their codes for a chance at instant prizes from LC and NHLShop.ca.

Then, for fans who tuned in on Wednesday nights for the featured NHL game, they would announce the grand prize winner live on broadcast.