Pizza Hut needs a time machine
Dear Pizza Hut,
The money you spent on this ad (concept, production, media) might have been better spent trying to invent a time machine to go back in time and name your restaurant something besides “Pizza Hut.” (Note: that won’t work for your China operations, since time travel has been outlawed there.) And no, dropping “Pizza” from the name now, after 50+ years, will not have the same effect. Alternatively, you could’ve spent the money trying to improve your pizza, like Domino’s did. Or you could’ve used it to run ads that focus on a strength we already associate with your brand, like pizza for families (not frat houses), or the in-restaurant dining experience (brick walls, arcade-game tables, and pitchers of icy root beer).
Because all this ad does is a) remind me that your pizza was never really that great, b) show that you’re not focused on improving the pizza, and c) make me think you probably set a similarly low bar for all this other food.
Hut’s Chicken Steak? Clearly, the naming troubles run deep.
Sincerely,
Rob
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Thanks PvW. Have heard that called Group Think…supposedly responsible for some near disasters in American policy, as well.
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There’s something called The Abilene Paradox in which a group of people collectively decide on a course of action counter to the preferences of any of the individuals in the group. It involves a common breakdown of group communication in which each member mistakenly believes that their own preferences are counter to the group’s and, therefore, doesn’t raise objections. A common issue relating to the Abilene paradox is a desire to not “rock the boat”.
Maybe we can make up a new condition or paradox describing the Pizza Hut Problem, described as such: Those that can consciously evolve, do. Those that can’t, spread themselves so thin with product diversification far beyond any reasonable limits, so much that they appear to be sqids, sucking up to and reaching for anyone with a mouth within range of their low-end and ever-multiplying offers. Putting lipstick on a pig.
I wish China would reconsider their time travel rejection. Star Trek and Kung Fu are still terrific and syndicated programs with a message (what a concept) — even though they were produced in a time and place, far, far away.