According to a report from QSR Magazine, Papa Johns ranked third among the national pizza chains in 2022 for total sales, barely edging Little Caesars for that position and trailing only Domino’s and Pizza Hut.
“People are obsessed with pizza, but they don’t really care that much about where they order it from,” Jerry Hoak, ecd for The Martin Agency, told Adweek. “There’s a ton of promiscuity, so we just need to make them relevant and get people thinking about Papa Johns, when they’re thinking pizza.”
Ruelle and Jeff Hagen, the vp of media and field activation, were “joined at the hip” during the review as Hagen put it in order to get Carat and Martin aligned for when they officially start working together on Jan. 1, 2024.
“The whole thing was you can’t just have short-term and long-term [marketing],” Hagen said. The review focused on combining both of them and getting the right balance. “And it’s really smart, driven off of consumer insights, but it’s also core to who Papa Johns is as a company.”
Inside the review
With a creative and media operating simultaneously, Shambura recognized the organization couldn’t manage both reviews, and he brought on Pile & Company, who he previously had a relationship with. The review ran four months, which they admitted was long, but the three stakeholders, Shambura, Ruelle and Hagen said they made themselves overly available.
“It was very important to Jaclyn, Jeff and myself that we showed up as really good, thoughtful partners to all of these agencies because the amount of time and effort they were putting into it,” Shambura said, adding, “It’s important to us to make sure that this went quickly but smoothly and in one that wasn’t going to destroy the agency’s time and value.”
All four finalists received multiple meetings in Atlanta in the final round and traveled to the agencies to get to know them. Papa Johns’ top marketers also didn’t go dark for weeks at a time, and made themselves accessible through check-ins and email, even with a consultant on-board running the pitch. Multiple agencies involved in the pitch told Adweek that this pitch was run well and noted how hands-on the brand’s top marketers were.
Following the review, Shambura said expect the first work from The Martin Agency to appear in spring 2024, and Hagen confirmed that Carat is already in-market buying media for the brand. As for Super Bowl plans, Shambura said those are still to be determined.
