Restaurant PR has no better calendar day than National Pizza Day, so how can we make PizzaExpress the go-to pizzeria and outperform the competition in terms of share of voice to ultimately drive consideration for PizzaExpress (& drive people into restaurants on a weekday lunchtime)?

Shine a spotlight on PizzaExpress’ iconic brand ingredients and leverage brand (and audience) passions of music, food & style to drive advocacy, brand love and differentiation.

‘Earn Your Stripes’: For one day only, in homage to the iconic PizzaExpress uniform, anyone turning up to a restaurant wearing a black & white striped top, on National Pizza Day, could claim a pizza ‘on the house’.​

To get the word out, photography of people queuing and eating in their stripes was captured and seeded out to media and shared across the PizzaExpress social channels, while influencers were sent mailers and encouraged to share on their own platforms.

PizzaExpress’ social share of voice doubled this National Pizza Day & they overtook Domino’s as the most talked-about pizza brand on social media in the UK.​

In earned media, the brand also held the majority share-of-voice (25% more than our closest competitor PizzaHut), making PEX the most visible pizza brand in earned media.​

The activation saw a ‘breakout’ increase for ‘Pizza Express National Pizza Day’ searches (Google saw a +5000% increase in searches for this term.)​

Plus, 10,000 people across the UK turned up wearing their stripes and claimed their free pizzas, driving a notable incremental lunchtime trade.