Posts Tagged ‘super bowl’

The single biggest day of the year for pizza sales is today: Super Bowl Sunday. I’m sure the same thing can be said for wings. What better day to sell wings than Super Bowl Sunday. I even saw where President Obama will be eating wings today, probably much to the dismay of Michelle.

Check out what pizza restaurants like Main Line Pizza are doing to help increase sales on Super Bowl Sunday.

Not everybody was a winner at Super Bowl 46, but AT&T Mobile certainly was.  In a post from John Donovan, senior executive vice president, he reported what happened at Lucas Oil Stadium, in addition to the Giants 21-17 victory.

AT&T customers attending the Super Bowl made a lot of phone calls — 75, 204 to be exact.  But, the number of calls was a small fraction of the total text messages that were sent and received by the fans at Lucas Oil Stadium.  Super Bowl fans attending the event sent and received 722,296 text messages during the game.  And, that’s in addition to all of the mobile marketing events at the Super Bowl.

No doubt, a lot of fans at the stadium wanted to share this event with as many friends and family as possible.  The numbers tell the story of just how integral sending and receiving a text message has become in our lives.  And, the importance of mobile in general.

Total customer usage of data was equally impressive: 215 GB were used–the highest data usage ever seen from a single sporting event.  Fants were posting lots of video and sending pictures to those of us watching in our family rooms instead of in Indianapolis.

AT&T’s efforts to enhance the user experience in Indianapolis were impressive.  It launched a Wi-Fi Hot Zone with 15 access points and added capacity to 200 cell sites throughout the Indy market.  It also deployed 9 COWs (Cells on Wheels) around the stadium.

Super Bowl Sunday requires some serious flour power at pizza restaurants across America.

The National Restaurant Association said that 55% of Super Bowl viewers order food from restaurants and 65% of them pick pizza.  For most pizza restaurants, that means that Super Bowl Sunday will mean twice as many pizzas as their next biggest day of the year.

Last year, Pizza Hut and Domino’s sold 2 million and 1.2 million pizzas respectively on the day of the biggest game of the year. Papa John’s sold more than 1 million pizzas on Super Bowl Sunday topping its 940,000 that it sold on Super Bowl Sunday in 2010.

Papa John’s Gives Away Free Pizza on Coin Flip

This year, however, Papa John’s has cooked up a new promotion in an attempt to top 2011’s sales.  If you go to the Papa John’s website, you can choose the outcome of the coin toss if you are a member of Papa John’s Rewards.  If the majority of Americans choose the outcome of the coin toss prior to the start of the Super Bowl, Papa John’s will give away one large one-topping pizza plus a two-liter Pepsi MAX to its Papa John’s Rewards members.

If you like to gamble based on historical outcomes, this is not the best place to do so.  In the first 45 Super Bowls, heads holds a slim 23-22 lead so it must be the year for tails, right?  Interestingly, the NFC team has won the coin toss for 14 consecutive years.

A coin flip that matches the choice of the fans is going to mean that Papa John’s employees are going to be flipping a lot more free pizzas in February.  And, Papa John’s hopes that its Rewards members will be flipping out if they win.

Despite the potential cost of the free food, Papa John’s online promotion and television commercials starring Peyton Manning and Jerome “The Bus” Bettis are helping it build its database of email addresses and mobile phone numbers.  A mushrooming database for email and mobile marketing is the result of savvy efforts such as this.

Private Stores Playbook for Pizza Sales

But, it isn’t just the large pizza chains who are trying to earn a larger slice of the super-size Super Bowl pie.  Local pizza restaurants like Main Line Pizza in Wayne, Pennsylvania, are also getting into the act.  Last year, single location store Main Line Pizza offered a Super Bowl party platter via its text message marketing and received an 11% return rate.

“That blew me away,” said Robert Saionz, owner of Main Line Pizza.

“It has been very effective,” said Jennifer Saionz who handles the marketing for Main Line Pizza and creates the text message promotions.

Jennifer said that the 84444.com text message marketing company that it uses has packages as low as $45 per month for up to 1000 text messages, thus making mobile marketing the most inexpensive advertising that it does.

Main Line Pizza builds its database through store-front signage, stickers on its pizza boxes, and by offering an immediate 10% discount for any new customer that opts-in to its database and shows the text message.

Taking Action on Super Bowl Pizza Sales

Super Sunday is the biggest day of the year for many things: hours spent watching television; dollars wagered; pizza sales.  While it’s probably too late for your restaurant to purchase a $3 million spot in the Super Bowl, there’s still time to set up a text message marketing promotion to have a spectacular Super Sunday in pizza pie sales.