I might, without risking a great deal of exaggeration, postulate that deep down (or deep dish), everyone is a pizza chef. If you haven’t made one at home from scratch (scratching open pre-packaged flour and a packet of sliced pepperoni, at least, to assemble ingredients in your preferred proportions), you’ve at least doctored a frozen ‘za with extra cheese, dashes of crushed red pepper, or fresh sliced mushroom. And you haven’t done either of those, you’ve either thought about it or aren’t even reading this item because you hate the stuff and this item has “pizza” in the title.
This easy route to chefdom–choosing and layering ingredients in an otherwise conventional edible template–makes Papa John’s “Papa’s Specialty Pizza Challenge” a very strong example of customer engagement through co-creation. The brand and the customer collaborate to bake up a uniquely personal product. Yes, this is a contest, and Papa John’s isn’t going to deliver your co-creation to your door, but the chain may be serving it up to your friends and the rest of the world if you win. Plus, the winning pizza chef gets a “slice of the sales, and free Papa John’s pizza for life.”
Contestants enter via a Papa John’s Facebook page, which affords plenty of opportunity for friends to share their recipes, boast a little, rate their competitors, praise the Papa, and share the word with other friends. At the time that I’m posting this blog entry, I see more than 1,100 entries–and the contest started yesterday, the 26th. (And it runs until June 14, 2010, by the by.)
Community, customer engagement, a certain level of data collection, a continuing promotional opportunity–if we could add a little extra garlic and segmentation slices to those ingredients, we’d have a pretty damn tasty customer loyalty recipe.
