Pizza Hut has announced it will be giving away 10,000 margherita pizzas between August 4 and August 6. According to the company, there’s “no catch” – just free pizza. However, before you start salivating at the thought of a delicious cheesy lunch, there’s something you need to know from the small print.
Pizza Hut’s free margherita pizza giveaway has caused a bit of a stir online, with the official Facebook post generating hundreds of likes and comments. Here’s the post’s opening line:
Because we love the most classic pizza, we’re giving away 10,000 FREE Margherita pizzas this weekend from Friday to Sunday!
And here’s the accompanying video:
It’s not difficult to see why people are getting excited. Who doesn’t love free pizza?
Unfortunately, anyone who bothered to read the second line would have had their enthusiasm immediately dampened. (Emphasis ours):
To get your free pizza simply head to your local Pizza Hut and be one of the first 10 customers each day (Fri, Sat & Sun) to order your free Margherita, but remember you must be in the store to pick it up!
This is a bit rubbish. It means you need to order your pizza as soon as your local store opens. Lunchtime and dinner are not an option. On top of this, the nature of the promotion means you’ll just have to take the franchisee’s word for it if they claim you missed out.
By limiting the deal to the first ten customers, Pizza Hut has managed to stretch the promotion over an entire weekend to maximise social media buzz. This might make sense from a PR perspective, but most people expecting to score a free pizza after watching the above video are going to be disappointed.
It’s a timely reminder that “going viral” on social media isn’t always beneficial to your business.
Comments
5 responses to “Don’t Be Fooled By Pizza Hut’s ‘Free Margherita Pizza’ Giveaway”
Don’t care. Free pizza.
I actually wouldn’t mind a Pizza Hut pizza. And I mean the original kind when it actually was a pizza and not one where any experiment goes into putting all things weird into the crusts.
That’s assuming I can even find one. The only one I remember is basically just a hut (no pun) and haven’t been there sense the very poor service and content they treated my mother with about a decade ago.
Really, it was going to be the first ten per store anyway. People weren’t going to wait around til dinner when there is only 10,000 Australia wide available. Plus, Pizza Hut opens at 11 (at least all my local ones do) so it could be had for “lunch” like you mention, just a tad early, or reheat it an hour later. Eastern states stores would open while it’s still 9am in the west with stores closed for another two hours. If it were 10,000 free-for-all with no limitations in place, all 10k would have been gone before stores even opened in the west.
How else were they supposed to do it and be fair to all stores? I’d love to hear.
A better approach would have been an online flash sale at a specific time, with delivery included. (This is how similar fast food promotions have been handled in the past.)
Failing that, they should have run the promotion over a single day – 30 free pizzas per store would have significantly increased your odds of getting one.
It’s not about fulfillment. It’s about PR.
Pizza Hut pizzas are bad. Just bad, even the free ones.