Daiya — Pizza Pyramid Scheme
— Services
- Design
- Campaign
- Influencer Relation
- Social Media
- Public Relations
- Web Design
- Tone of Voice
— Collaborations
- Jive PR
- Digital on organic social
Driving a plant-based pizza trial inspired by the master manipulators
How do you get non-vegans, who don’t have any specific dietary requirements, to try plant-based pizza? How do you get them to realize it can be just good as the real deal? You learn from the master manipulators and launch a pyramid scheme.
The Daiya Pizza Pyramid Scheme was a nationwide ploy to drive plant-based pizza trial. This multi-channel campaign borrowed from multi-level marketing schemes and leveraged PR, influencers and reached over 4.5m people. 12,000 of them were so moved that they joined the scheme – creating the world’s fastest growing pyramid scheme and dishing out free plant-based pizza goodness for all. Bon appetite.
The Challenge
How do you get none vegans to try plant-based pizza? If they don’t have dietary requirements, why would they even bother?
We took learnings from master manipulators and launched the world’s first pizza pyramid scheme to drive nationwide trial.
Our Approach
The Daiya Pizza Pyramid Scheme was the first legal pyramid scheme. It invited those who joined to get their hands on free plant-based pizza. If they liked it, they were able to recruit their friends and family to also get a slice of the action. Free pizza to all. This was world’s biggest plant-based pizza trial.
We started with a website takeover over – turning Daiya’s existing website into a Pizza Pyramid Scheme recruitment page that housed all campaign messaging and showed potential recruits exactly how to get involved. We kept the “store locator” on the site so it was clear for recruits where their local stockiest was.
Next up was influencers. We enlisted the help of eight influencers to kickstart this campaign. They spanned comedy, food, and lifestyle and importantly, none of them were vegan. Each received the Pizza Pyramid Scheme welcome box which included their plant-based pizzas and branded swag – such as tote and pin badges, to formally invite them into the scheme. They each received personal codes which they could give to their friends by way of an invitation.
Then they started recruiting. In sharing their personal codes, their friends and family were able to email: givemefreepizza@daiyafoods.com with their details and get sent coupons for their own free pizzas, as well as their unique personal codes. And it wasn’t long before this pyramid GREW.
We also used Daiya’s organic social content to promote the campaign – sharing witty assets that played on pyramid scheme language, alongside re-sharing of the influencer content.
A press release crossed the wire, alongside hero images of the Pizza Pyramid Scheme swag – driving intrigue around the campaign in both the vegan and non vegan press.
The Reaction
The campaign response exceeded anything we could have imagined. Within 48 hours we’d had 2,000 people email requesting to be part of the pyramid scheme. Within 2 weeks, it was 12,000.
We provided all 12,000 people with 2 x free coupons, driving people into the stores to ask for Daiya and encouraging mass trial.