Pizza Marketing 101: What NOT to Do

I've only been back in the Marketing Department of a restaurant chain known for pizza for a month but even I know this was a bad idea.

Papa John's in an attempt to gain exposure in the saturated restaurant market of Washington, DC decided to print t-shirts with a number 23 on the back and the name "Crybaby" on the top for fans to wear during the Washington Wizards-Cleveland Cavaliers opening round series at the Verizon Center. They looked liked this.



Of course the implication that Cleveland's star player Lebron James (23) was a "crybaby" upset many Ohioans who threatened a boycott.

So, in an attempt to appease these fans, Papa John's offered 23 cent Large One-Topping pizzas yesterday.

So of course,thousands waited hours in line on Thursday and as every pizza restaurant from Acropolis to Papa John's to your swankiest Italian neighborhood pizzeria does, they ran out of dough and had to shut doors on people who had been waiting for hours.

So post-mortem here's what was accomplished.

1. Pissing off a whole state by placating a couple thousand customers in an another area just to produce a witty t-shirt.

2. Selling pizza in that state for one day at a loss which is almost impossible to do for pizza.

3. Shutting doors on customers in the already pissed off area when you eventually run out of product.

Now even though the makers of the T-Shirt have been proven to be right (Lebron doesn't flop necessarily he "oversells" like he got shot everytime he gets touched) and Bertuccci's has over 45 restaurants in New England and none in Ohio. Bertuccci's will not be taking part in any promotion that could lead to such a backlash. Needless to say.