Not for Sharing

In order to break into the lunch space, Pizza Hut created a new product for solo diners: new Pizza Hut Melts. Our goal was to drive awareness of the product through press coverage and with social sharing. Unlike pizza, Melts are just for you. So how do you get people to share the news? You tell them NOT to share it.

We did the exact opposite of what most brands would do when launching a new product. We told people not to share it—in real life or on social media. So yes, we paid, bribed and even negotiated with fans online to prevent them from sharing their Melts.

For signing our MDA (Melts Disclosure Agreement) and promising never to share, we offered people $100. That quickly grabbed headlines, but it only made people want to share it more. So whenever someone inevitably posted their Melts, we negotiated with them to take it down, replying to their posts with a special offer. Fans bartered for an Xbox, drone, lava lamp and more just for deleting their Melts. Of course, that only fueled others to share their Melts as well.

Turns out when you tell people not to do something, it only makes them want to do it more. With press from our MDA announcement plus social sharing of our Melts negotiations, we garnered over 2.1 billion impressions for new Pizza Hut Melts. That included over 660 media placements, resulting in 266,000 fan signatures of our MDA. In a world of sharing, we chose to launch our new product by doing the exact opposite, leading to Pizza Hut’s most-successful launch of the year.