Challenge
Pizza Hut Restaurants UK were once again bringing in the evening crowds following a change of CEO and a full rebrand. The reinvigorated Pizza Hut offered all-American dining with a new menu, new layouts and a cocktail menu. All they needed was to attract people who would to bring the experience to life for diners by embodying the rugged Americanness of Pizza Hut’s roots.
Insight
The main challenge was getting staff to embody Americanness – The American Dream – with all its freedom, aspiration and, not least, glamour front and centre. Focus groups with existing Pizza Hut staff revealed how this might be done. Their stories of camaraderie, rising quickly through the ranks, and ‘going the extra mile’ for customers and colleagues suggested that staff felt unrestrained in going beyond normal boundaries to give customers the best experience.
Story
We made this sense of freedom – central as it is to the American Dream – the conceptual bridge to an All-American employer brand that would make Pizza Hut a place where people could come and, with hard work, build a truly special career for themselves. This idea – dubbed ‘Taste Freedom’ – was woven into every facet of employee experience with:
• Brand new careers website
• Taste Freedom Manifesto video (embedded in website)
• Letterhead
• Word doc template
• PowerPoint template
• Staff newsletter
• Long service awards
• Recruitment posters
• Pull-up stands
• Table talkers
• HTML emailtemplate
• Direct Mailleaflets
• All online job listings copy rewritten into Taste Freedom tone
• Point of sale collateral
• New store opening collateral
Craft
The Taste Freedom employer brand had a massive impact, with figures in keeping with Pizza Hut’s recent successes:
• In the first 12 months Pizza Hut Restaurants UK received a staggering 290,000 applications via the careers website and 23,000 in a single month
•Restaurants have seen attrition improve by up to 90% over a 12-month period
•Applications have increased by 55% on the previous year
Sue Stephens, Pizza Hut Resourcing Manager said, “Well, what can I say?! We did it – yay! Whoop whoop!”
