Background

For several years now Pizza Pizza has honoured 4/20 – the holiest day in the cannabis calendar – with special offers for hungry cannabis connoisseurs. While these promotions appealed to a niche audience, Pizza Pizza hadn’t made much noise about them.

This year, Pizza Pizza decided to have a little more fun, inviting us to help them think outside the pizza box while still working within a modest budget. What could we do to really celebrate how pot and pizza are the perfect partners?

Idea

Anyone who has experienced the effects of cannabis knows that it does two things: It makes you happy and it makes you hungry. While happiness is its own reward, hunger is a craving that needs to be satiated, and pizza is the perfect solution: It’s fast, it’s hot, it tickles your taste buds and it fills you up.

Recognizing that pot and pizza are the perfect partners, we decided to go beyond clever messaging to reimagine the 4/20 experience from the inside out. We turned Pizza Pizza’s recently launched stromboli into “pre-rolls” expertly hand-rolling the stromboli to resemble a giant joint. And then the Pre-Rolls were wrapped to further resemble a pre-rolled joint complete with their own consumption warning sticker.

To supercharge the synergy between pot and pizza, we then created the ‘Hot Box’. On the outside it looked like a normal pizza box, the inside was divided into compartments designed to hold a Pizza Pizza Pre-Roll, a dipping sauce, a dipping-sauce-shaped ‘Creamy Ganja’ grinder, filter papers, pineapple-flavoured rolling papers, a lighter, and a rolling tray. In other words, an entirely integrated 4/20 product experience.

Results

Cannabis lovers loved it. Pizza lovers loved it. And the media loved it. The Pre-Roll campaign lit up 4/20 with:

9.3MM earned media and PR impressions (186% of our 5MM target and 263%      ahead of 2023 offering)

19% year-over-year sales (almost double our goal of a 10% lift versus 2023’s 4 pizzas for $20)

289K cannabis influencer impressions