Earlier this month, we took a look at Macy’s “Sweetest Tweets” promotion, which offered Twitter users a chance to win diamond jewelry if they tweeted short love notes with the #sweetesttweets hashtag attached.
Last week, Pizza Hut decided to jump on the “sweetest tweets” bandwagon with its “Sweetest Tweets with the Sweetest Treats to Celebrate Valentine’s Day” contest, offering free dessert sticks to the Twitter users who tweeted the best pick-up lines in 140-characters or less, using the hashtag #iluvPH.
The promotion runs through Valentine’s Day, with winners to be announced Monday, February 15. If your cheesy pickup line happens to win the contest and snag you a date with the girl of your dreams, you can go into diabetic shock together with a free order of Pizza Hut’s Hershey’s chocolate dunkers.
So, what inspired Pizza Hut to seek out and reward the cheesiest, gooiest pick-up lines? The St. Louis Food blog spoke to Sarah Rosanova, a PR representative for Pizza Hut, who explained that “It’s just a fun way that we can engage our followers on Twitter, and everyone loves sharing cheesy pick-up lines.”
But did the contest actually engage Pizza Hut’s Twitter followers? Despite some media attention, a press release, and coverage on Mashable, according to What the Hashtag, by 10:18pm Eastern on the last day of the contest, there were only 243 tweets containing the hashtag. Many people entered the contest more than once.
Even considering that it ran longer, Macy’s promotion seems to have beemuch more successful, with 1,614 tweets at last count.
The good news is that if you entered, there’s a pretty good chance that you won those chocolate-covered dessert sticks. I can’t help but wonder whether their response would have been better if they’d given away a more popular menu item, like a pizza or even cheesesticks.
The contest did yield some interesting responses-although if the contestants actually use these pick-up lines in real-life, I’m afraid they may be eating chocolate-covered pizza dough alone. Here are a few of the worst offenders:
“Are you free tonight, or is it going to cost me?”
“I can see my force is strong with you.” Okay, this one might work at a sci-fi/fantasy convention.
“Baby, let’s eat a whole Meat Lover’s pizza together and then you take care of me all night with Alka-Seltzer and TUMS.”
Of course, this promotion does illustrate how important social media has become as a marketing tool, even if it’s hard to be sure what will end up going viral ahead of time. Dukky’s software can help you integrate social media into your direct marketing campaigns-increasing their reach and making it easy for them to go viral. With our platform, customers can share your offer via email and via social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.
We offer an easy and effective method to integrate social media into your existing marketing campaigns. The success of your promotion won’t depend on whether you attract the attention of the “right people” on Twitter or whether your hashtag makes Twitter’s trending topics. Instead, you’ll watch your response rates soar as your recipients share your offer with friends and family via whatever social network is most comfortable for them.
What do you think of Pizza Hut’s Valentine’s Day promotion? If you were designing it, would you have done anything differently?
Tags: Pizza Hut, social media, Twitter