Crust marketer aims for unfair share of attention with marketing plan

Cementing its position as a premium QSR brand and becoming the stand out pizza choice in a disrupted food delivery market lie at the heart of Crust’s brand overhaul and fresh campaign work this month.

The company’s latest campaign launch using the moniker ‘It’s not pizza. It’s Crust’, debuted last week in the Australian market across on-demand TV, social, digital display, pay TV and out-of-home. The humour-laden creative approach sees the gourmet pizza brand travel to the home of pizza, Naples in Italy, as a way of demonstrating its products are non-traditional, asking locals what they think of its menu options.

The campaign was developed with 303 MullenLowe Sydney and its Mediahub division, and centres around footage of Neapolitans exhibiting anger, surprise, confusion, joy and a small riot in a local Naples marketplace upon being presented with pizza options from Crust.

Crust marketing manager, Zoe Jacovou, told CMO the campaign is the latest example of how the brand is seeking to not only be relevant, but stand out in what has become a disrupted food marketplace.

“We often talk about relevance as marketers – in 2020, we are not only going for that, but to be the stand out choice,” she said. “The competitive landscape shifted in the last five years. Every type of food can be delivered thanks to food delivery aggregators.

“Our mantra to be relevant but standout is about talking to that environment we are operating in.”

The campaign ties into a three core strategies Crust is harnessing in its marketing going into 2020, Jacovou said. The first is brand rejuvenation work that commenced last year to transform the brand’s visual identity in time for its 20^th birthday shortly.

For the past year, work has focused on brand identity elements, from the logo to pizza boxes and online. The next step is to revamp physical identity, and Jacovou is in the midst of a national roadshow to sell the new brand look to franchisees.

Within the QSR ecosystem, Crust has typically been towards the premium end of the space, and the new brand look and feel aims to emphasise that, she said.  

Second on the marketing strategy priority list for 2020 is market-leading menu innovation, something Jacovou said was core to the company’s DNA. More recent product launches have seen Crust putting plant protein as well as smoky beef brisket and Moreton Bay bugs on its pizzas, and ramp up its ‘free from’ range.

The third pillar is what Jacovou described as “campaign heartland” and building Crust an “unfair share of attention” in the market. To do this, the brand is exploring different campaign executions and activations. This includes addressable TV, demographic and geographic targeting, data-driven online pre-roll media and better harnessing first and third-party data.

“New this year is us hunting down activations to bring that unfair share of attention to life,” Jacovou said. “For instance, we’re looking at untraditional times for pizza, where we will burst into the market to build that word-of-mouth and get that consumer buzz going.”

Influencer marketing has been part of this approach, and Crust has invested in both macro and micro executions as a way of lifting its share of voice. One recent example was tapping into influencers to lift its presence in the vegan community.

In addition, investment continues into Crust’s ecommerce platform, with strong focus on mobile and mobile app capability. Off the back of the last six months of development work, Jacovou noted increased conversion rates both online and view its app, as well as a rise in mobile app downloads.

To support efforts, Crust has brought on an ecommerce manager and a digital marketing specialist, and she cited ongoing investment in CRM and marketing automation.

“We have a lot of first-party data as an commerce business… so having that continually evolving CRM platform and insight on our customers is key,” Jacovou added.

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