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Pizza Hut to be known as “The Hut”

June 19, 2009

In perhaps the worst Advertising move the world has seen since Enfatico, Pizza Hut has decided to change their name to “The Hut”, MSN is reporting.

Honestly, I don’t care if they spend 300 million on changing all the signs, 30 years from now people will still call it Pizza Hut… because guess what… that is what Pizza Hut sells. Someone tell me who Pizza Hut’s advertising agency of record is? Because this one deserves a call. A re-branding of that size will cost in the tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, and will look exactly like what Tropicana’s rebranding did to their bottom line… for one thing it wiped out 20% of their sales… and several hundred million in rebranding costs.

Did Peter Arnell think of this one as well? Because if this rebranding works as most of us think it will, the below picture will be a very common sight.

knox_ph01

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Written by TheFounder · Filed Under Advertising Agency News 


Comments

  • http://industry.bnet.com/advertising/10002668/pizza-hut-plan-to-change-name-to-the-hut-meets-with-ridicule/ Pizza Hut Plan to Change Name to “The Hut” Meets With Ridicule | BNET Advertising Blog | BNET

    [...] called it “the worst Advertising move the world has seen since Enfatico.” To add to the confusion, some locations in the U.K. were changed to “Pasta [...]

  • http://www.pixelmaverick.com/ Eric Williamson

    To answer your question, the AOR for Pizza Hut is BBDO. Time will tell on the idea to rebrand to The Hut, but BBDO has done some really good work for them in the past.

  • http://www.pixelmaverick.com Eric Williamson

    To answer your question, the AOR for Pizza Hut is BBDO. Time will tell on the idea to rebrand to The Hut, but BBDO has done some really good work for them in the past.

  • http://www.tribbleagency.com/ TheFounder

    Eric,

    I hope it doesn’t turn into Tropicana… but think about it… let’s say that it increases revenue by a few percentage points for 2 years…… let’s just assume that… It’s a great campaign…

    But after spending hundreds of millions on changing stationary, changing business cards, changing the 40,000 dollar signs in front of each and every location, new uniforms,… and I didn’t even get into the advertising costs yet… at the end your looking at a massive undertaking… and massive dollars allocated out from their pocket… and right into BBDO’s pocket (and the media companies, and the companies that make signs, and uniforms… etc etc)

    This is truly a no win situation.

    Any branding campaign based on removing the word “pizza” from it’s name is minuscule and most likely will have minuscule results, but yet are forced to incur the full costs of it (such as getting new expensive signs on their thousands of locations)

    No matter how you cut it, they won’t come out on top with this one… look how poorly their press release was written… sending out 3 messages in the same release.. all of them confusing….

    This is amateur work.

  • http://www.tribbleagency.com TheFounder

    Eric,

    I hope it doesn’t turn into Tropicana… but think about it… let’s say that it increases revenue by a few percentage points for 2 years…… let’s just assume that… It’s a great campaign…

    But after spending hundreds of millions on changing stationary, changing business cards, changing the 40,000 dollar signs in front of each and every location, new uniforms,… and I didn’t even get into the advertising costs yet… at the end your looking at a massive undertaking… and massive dollars allocated out from their pocket… and right into BBDO’s pocket (and the media companies, and the companies that make signs, and uniforms… etc etc)

    This is truly a no win situation.

    Any branding campaign based on removing the word “pizza” from it’s name is minuscule and most likely will have minuscule results, but yet are forced to incur the full costs of it (such as getting new expensive signs on their thousands of locations)

    No matter how you cut it, they won’t come out on top with this one… look how poorly their press release was written… sending out 3 messages in the same release.. all of them confusing….

    This is amateur work.

  • Joseph

    Re-branding or not, the Pizza will always suck big time.

  • Joseph

    Re-branding or not, the Pizza will always suck big time.

  • nathrat

    Well, they do sell pasta now. I don’t know if it burns a hole in your stomach like their pizza does though.

  • nathrat

    Well, they do sell pasta now. I don’t know if it burns a hole in your stomach like their pizza does though.

  • http://topsy.com/tb/bit.ly/SHVGY Tweets that mention Pizza Hut to be known as “The Hut” — Topsy.com

    [...] this page was mentioned by Untitled Advertsing (@untitledad), MadameSoybean (@madamesoybean), MadameSoybean (@MadameSoybean), mahacreative (@mahacreative), Eric Williamson (@edubble_u) and others. [...]

  • maxtex54

    pizza hut still my preferred place to get pizza. It just rocks!