Dentsu Creative Malaysia & Carat Media Create Cheese Codes for Gamers to Order Pizza IRT During the 2022 FIFA World Cup

Brands that seize moments of engagement with real-time contextual brand experiences can captivate consumers during crucial purchase moments. In December, The 2022 FIFA World Cup became a battleground for QSR brands as traditional media spaces were cluttered with their ads and promos. This brought an unexpected marketing challenge for the annual Cheesy Poppers Pizza promo campaign – how do we get the maximum share of voice?

Dentsu Creative Malaysia teamed up with Carat Media to change the playing field and play the game with a new audience. Data showed increased downloads of mobile football games including FIFA Mobile, Football Manager, and Top Eleven – nearly 1.2 million active gamers (and climbing). Enter gamers, a passionate and untapped audience who loved to recreate score lines of live matches in the virtual world. Backed by this fan behaviour, we created ‘Cheese Codes’ to hack the beautiful game for Cheesy Poppers pizza combos.

"The World Cup is a prime period for any brand, and we understand the costs of battling competitors for a greater share of voice. Instead, we sought a strategic creative solution that showcased Dentsu Creative's unified strength. Recognizing gamers' aversion to traditional advertising, our idea seamlessly connected across relevant channels like Twitter to generate more buzz," explained Kunal Roy, CEO of Dentsu Creative Malaysia.

Every time a goal was scored on live TV, a unique Cheese Code dropped on dynamic A-boards in mobile football games. Gamers simply tapped to redeem the codes for real-time delivery of pizza combos. The codes were created by combining player names with pizza toppings: MBAPPEPPERONI, CRISPIANO, MEZZIRELLA, NEYMARINARA, MODRICHILI, and so many more.

"Our commitment to Modern Creativity compelled us to play a different game compared to our competitors. Football thrives in the real-time world. Our fan engagement campaign aimed to infiltrate real-time conversations for real-life conversions. This move paid off with boosted sales and enhanced brand sentiment—a win-win-win for us, the brand, and the consumers," Andrew Low, Group CCO at Dentsu Creative Malaysia, emphasized.

As the World Cup progressed, the team concurrently tracked live games, selecting codes that would be relevant to the player that scores a goal. "This allowed us to stay current, break through the media chaos, with increased attention and engagement," shared Sid Nair, creative director at Dentsu Creative Malaysia.

The campaign gained a significant share of voice, with Cheesy Poppers witnessing a 14% surge in sales in just twenty-five days. The campaign registered 8.4 million media impressions with a reach of 1.1 million unique viewers, and engaged over a million gamers.

Emily Chong, CMO of Pizza Hut Malaysia, expressed her delight, stating, "the success of this campaign exceeded our personal and marketing expectations. The gamified approach and business results speak for themselves. We look forward to continuing to engage new customers in their own gaming worlds in 2023 and beyond."