Pizza Hut: Female Gamers’ New Hero

Challenge

Pizza Hut was one of the first western fast food restaurant brands to enter China in the early 90s. Today, although having more than 2,000 restaurants the Asian giant, Pizza Hut is facing fierce competition. Consumers, especially of young generations, have way too many choices as to where and what to eat.  

Pizza Hut wanted to reconnect with them through Honor of Kings, the No.1 mobile game globally, with over 50M MAU and 200M players. But, because of the game’s popularity, it requires an unaffordable sponsorship cost to collaborate with it. 

However, Honor of Kings allows its gamer community to vote each year for one new community-created avatar to be brought into the game as a regular character. That was Pizza Hut’s door into the game for free. 

 

Strategy

In 2016, Pizza Hut created for the game a brand avatar, Angela, but the character failed to win the popular vote for three consecutive years, largely due to its unpopularity among the then large male gamer base. In 2019, it was observed that the number of female users overtook that of male users. It was time for Pizza Hut to awaken the support and love for Angela and gave female gamers their long-deserved representation in the game by hijacking the avatar vote. 

 To do so, Pizza Hut provoked a social movement among the gamer community. 

 

Execution

Before the vote, Pizza Hut ignited a social revolution on Weibo and Douyin. Calling on the female gamer community to unite forces, the brand created content and encouraged fans to create their own UGC to drive votes. In addition, the restaurant chain promised discounts on a win. During the vote, Pizza Hut inspired the female gamer community to get strategic, encouraging them to post UGC content on male vertical communities, namely Bilibili and HuPu Sports, asking male gamers for their support. After the vote, Pizza Hut offered 70% discounts and amplified the win with pro-team and KOL endorsements. 

 

Results

With $0 media budget, Pizza Hut successfully got Angela permanently integrated into the game, winning over a 73million votes to take the No.1 spot – the first female character to ever do so in the game’s history!   

As a result of the social movement, Pizza Hut earned nearly 400 million media impressions for free across different platforms, helping to largely lift sales among this community.  

 In addition, Pizza Hut created much-needed support for female gamers in the community, with more than 10 top Honor of Kings eSports clubs taking to social media to commemorate the historic first female avatar win, finally giving female gamers their due representation.