Pizza Hut launches a new campaign with its first-ever brand ambassador Anuradha Menon; aims to rebrand itself as a delivery-first brand that offers value ‘Dil Khol Ke’

• To cash in on a pandemic-led surge in online ordering, Pizza Hut altered its business model last year. As a result, 60% of its revenue came from in-home delivery.
• However, consumers continue to associate Pizza Hut with its dine-in experience and remember it as a legacy restaurant brand.
• To change its image in the market and establish itself as a delivery-first platform that delivers ‘Dil Khol Ke,’ Pizza Hut has onboarded a new brand ambassador, Anuradha Menon, and has begun its marketing blitz with her today.
• Neha, Chief Marketing Officer, Pizza Hut India shares the brand’s thought behind pivoting from a dine-in to delivery brand and the steps being taken to achieve this transformation, idea behind bringing back Lola Kutty, what the revamp entails and larger vision for the brand.

When India announced its first lockdown after COVID hit, a lot of consumers rushed to supermarkets to buy groceries, refill ration for at least a month and ordered food online from their favourite local restaurants. Gradually, the pandemic sparked a paradigm shift in the marketing landscape and altered the way consumers shop. People grew fond of ordering inside the safety of their four walls and in-home delivery leap-frogged. From medicine to food, consumers prefer ordering everything online from trusted brands. According to imarc, the Indian online food delivery market reached a value of US$ 4.35 Billion in 2020 and revenue in the Online Food Delivery segment is projected to reach US$11919m in 2021, predicts Statista.

Multinational food platform Pizza Hut, which was otherwise known for its dine-in experience, also saw a spike in demand for in-home deliveries as 60% of its annual revenue comes from contactless delivery as of now. However, despite this shift in its modus operandi, consumers continue to perceive Pizza Hut as a legacy restaurant and dine-in brand. So, to alter its image and reposition itself as a contemporary brand that is spontaneously associated with delivery, Pizza Hut has planned an advertising blitz.

The brand has onboarded Anuradha Menon aka Lola Kutty as its face and rolled out a quirky, new campaign. Titled ‘Dil Khol Ke Delivery,’ the campaign and revamp exercise aims to position it as a delivery-first platform that pours its heart into serving its consumers.

Telling us more about the campaign and rebranding exercise, Neha, Chief Marketing Officer, Pizza Hut India said, “Firstly, the entire platform is not just about delivery. We have done a smart play or a cheeky play on words by using the word delivery, but when we say Dil Khol Ke Delivery, we are talking about many different aspects of the brand that we are delivering to the consumer. We are talking about Dil Khol Ke satisfying taste and quality. So, whether it is our dough made freshly in stores every day, whether it is all our wonderful topping combinations, our flavorful sauce, our 100%, mozzarella cheese and safety and hygienic practices that we use to deliver a quality product at your doorstep, or in our stores. The second piece is around Dil Khol Ke delivering deals or value -- being able to give something for everyone and that’s how we define our Dil Khol Ke delivering deals of value to the consumer. The other aspect is how do we ensure that we are making things easy for the consumer. Today's consumer doesn't want complex options. So how do we make the brand easy and accessible is the fourth bucket. We felt that just associating the brand with delivery for such a strong brand as ours, such a loved brand as ours, was not enough and therefore, the articulation we had come up with is Dil Khol Ke Delivery.”

This new avatar will be visible across all consumer touchpoints from opening the website to dining in any of its food chains.

To convey this message, Pizza Hut was looking for a ‘magnetic’ brand ambassador that could create high recall value and stand out.

“When we started this journey and we started looking for who would be the right personality to fit this storytelling, we kept our mind open and didn't keep filters. The only filters we kept I would say was who would marry with the brand personality. We wanted somebody authentic, we wanted somebody who would be friendly, approachable, but at the same time, was a little cheeky, was modern, was able to not take themselves too seriously and therefore had a good sense of humor and was able to deliver this entire new conversation we are trying to have with the consumer in a very confident manner because we believe that this person had to for consumers literally be the brand. When people saw the person, it should be literally like yes, I can believe this is a Pizza Hut magnetic ambassador and therefore, when we started interacting with Anuradha and we saw her and heard her. She has a lot of freshness and naturalness about her. She is definitely a great actor and therefore, a lot of versatility to be able to carry off some of the more crazy things that some of this advertising will demand because as we go forward. We want to make it fun for the consumer. It has to be something they enjoy watching while they also get the brand's message and we believe that Anuradha Menon does a fabulous job at that,” shared Neha.

Pizza Hut recently completed 25 years in India and launched its 500th store in Moga, Punjab and has aggressive growth plans to expand its presence across the country, including tier-2 and tier-3 markets.Its expansion focus will be on the Fast-Casual Delco (FCD) format, which is a delivery-first store, but also offers dine-in and takeaway under the same roof. Pizza Hut also aims to achieve growth in delivery through both owned and aggregator platforms which are growing at a healthy pace.

Sharing Pizza Hut’s larger vision, Neha said, “At the end of two years of this campaign, where I would love to be at is for people to recognize that Pizza Hut is also a delivery brand, but is not just a delivery brand. So the strong equities that we have built with the consumer in dine-in, which differentiates us from a lot of other dine-in brands, I hope that we will be able to achieve the same with the consumer and delivery. And our quarter 4 is looking very exciting. We have an innovation lined up, which will be revealed shortly, but that innovation is something that nobody's seen before in this category and therefore, we believe it's also our way of introducing the Dil Khol Ke platform to the country because it's doing things in a large-hearted manner, doing things in a different manner and that's how I hope that the brand will continue to remain relevant, easy and distinctive with the consumer.”