Papa John’s had many successful years with the award-winning Rangers 7 promotion – offering half-price pizzas the day after the Texas Rangers scored at least seven runs in a game. The client challenged us with launching a new promotion to celebrate Ranger fans and their favorite team. Rangers 7 always made things exciting when the team put up lots of runs, but the client wanted to reward Rangers fans on a more regular basis.
Everybody knows pizza and baseball go great together. With dinnertime games almost every weeknight, it made sense to create an offer that could be used every Rangers game day. And we all know the best way to grab the attention of baseball fans is by incorporating an all-time fan favorite player.
Our introductory season was one in which all the sevens magically aligned. We were honored to team up with the Ranger’s legendary Number 7, Hall of Famer Iván “Pudge” Rodriguez. The offer: $7 large pizzas every Rangers game day. And The Rangers were striving for their 7th divisional championship. The idea was to have Pudge spread the word to fans about our new promotion, in his own unique way.
This integrated campaign, launched on opening day, was designed to create a buzz and activate the fan base online, making every Rangers game day a Papa John’s occasion. We counted on our sports-legend spokesman to grab attention and then deliver the good news of Papa John’s new $7 Game Day Deal.
Our television campaign featured Pudge smacking $7 promotional baseballs out of the Ballpark at Arlington and across the DFW metroplex, where we saw fans catching them. The beautiful footage was brought to life by original music and sound design scored by Luminous Sound Studios. For radio, we used Pudge’s voice and baseball sound effects to get the message across.
Our online goal was to make the promotion a rallying cry for Rangers fans all over DFW. We used a combination of pragmatic, conversion-driven media buys, a unique DFW-only promotional landing page, and a gamified social influencer program to truly put the promotion—and the partnership—in the fan’s hands.
Rangers 7 promotion was a Grand Slam. The investment returned sales at a ratio of 15-to-1 and set sales records in the process, including year-over-year comp sales growth of 153%. We even set a single day sales record that beat the previous record set on Super Bowl Sunday! According to field reports, the Papa John’s promotion was so successful that arch-rival Domino’s began cutting staff at competing stores whenever the Rangers scored seven points.
— Chandra Jones, Director of Calendar Planning, Papa John’s Pizza
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