The Australian
1 December 2008
Simon Canning
PIZZA Hut is poised to dump one of the most recognised phone numbers in Australian marketing in a multi-million-dollar move.
Customers will be asked to key the fast food chain's name in to their phones instead.
Pizza Hut has marketed its home delivery service under the 9481 1111 banner for the past 25 years, accompanying the number with Rossini's William Tell Overture.
However, with rival Domino's Pizza moving exclusively to a phone name (1300 DOMINOS) rather than a number earlier this year, the chain has decided to follow suit.
Pizza Hut will shift to advertising 1300 PIZZA HUT on Tuesday, a move marketing director Angela Richards says will ultimately work in the brand's favour.
"With a brand as strong as Pizza Hut's, enlisting a phone name will allow us to further capitalise on the strength of our brand name as well as providing a simple number for customers to remember," she said.
The old Pizza Hut number achieved unaided recall of more than 15 per cent, one of the highest figures in Australia.
"We have been looking at this for many years, but could not make the change until we had solved some technology issues," Ms Richards said.
"We have three different numbers nationally and you have varying recall for each of them, but the most difficult market for us was Sydney."
But Pizza Hut's new campaign will again feature the William Tell Overture but "1300 pizza hut" will be sung instead of "9481 1111".
Pizza Hut is expected to invest more than $2 million in marketing the number change, including changing boxes and flyers and repainting delivery cars.
"There is an element of cost, but in the longer term there are significant savings," she said.
Along with being able to operate with a single number nationwide, Pizza Hut will be able to take advantage of new digital technology so people can send SMS messages -- such as pizza orders -- directly to the number for the first time.
Ms Richards said the plan to change the longstanding number met with initial resistance from franchisees.
"There was some concern. It is such a heritage item, but they understand what we will be able to do," he said.
The fast food chain will continue to use its other numbers, including 9481 1111, until the number of calls coming from the new phone name number outstrips those from the original.
Ms Richards said there was no timetable for the scrapping of the old numbers. but they would no longer be used at all after the national campaign launch tomorrow night.
"Our 9481 number has double the recall of almost any other phone number out there, but it is the time to change," she said.
She said the Pizza Hut's decision to move to a phone name had not been influenced by Domino's decision earlier this year.