How do you improve on pizza – that holy trinity of crust, tomato sauce and cheese, which has been a staple of many busy Canadian families for a few generations?

One of the ways to stand out in the crowded frozen food section in grocery stores is to put cheese into the pizza crust. While this particular marketing gimmick is not new – Pizza Hut claims to have invented the idea back in the mid-‘90s – it is a popular concept. For the latest iteration of putting things into pizza crusts to drive interest, Delissio decided to lean into the innate silliness of the concept with its current “No Crust Left Behind” campaign to promote its new, permanent stuffed-crust pizza line.

The campaign revolves around the insight that when people eat pizza, the crust often remains uneaten on the plate and ultimately gets thrown out, said Jenny Sochnacki, senior marketing manager and consumer engagement lead, food division at Nestlé Canada (which owns the Delissio frozen pizza brand), in an email interview.

“A sure sign that a meal is a success is a clean plate. The absence of uneaten food, in other words. This is a universal truth,” noted Sochnacki. “Delissio makes crust you actually want to eat… So when we launched our new stuffed-crust pizza, we decided to share that in a fun way.”

The frozen-pizza brand had previously released limited editions of stuffed crust pizza and then launched it as a permanent addition in February. The two-phase campaign, which AOR OneMethod created, kicked off in April with digital, social, out-of-home billboards and transit shelter ads, sampling and a TV spot. It also created a website, NoCrustLeftBehind.ca, featuring an interactive quiz called “Crustistics,” which offer people a coupon if they enter their age, how many pizza slices they eat per month and whether they eat the crusts to calculate how many crusts they’ve “left behind.”

Then, the brand retargeted consumers who had already engaged with its creative via “Crust Paper.” The brand cheekily used other brands’ leftover pizza crusts to make paper and print ads promoting the stuffed-crust pizza from Delissio called “other, less fortunate pizza crusts.”

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Not all crusts are eaten and so “in an attempt to bring some levity and humour, we focused on the good we can do with those [uneaten] crusts,” said Sochnacki. “We’re targeting families. We want to bring people together and really simplify meal-time, but not take ourselves too seriously.”

Delissio released two videos showcasing the making of the posters in documentary-style short videos with tongue firmly in cheek. The “Crust Paper” video has gotten almost 75,000 views since being posted on YouTube on June 17. The second phase of the campaign is in market from June 15 until August 5.

The campaign has so far paid off, according to the company. The goal of the new product launch was to ultimately drive trial-and-purchase intent. Those aware of the campaign were 3.5 times more likely to have tried Stuffed Crust than those who weren’t, said Sochnacki. And purchase intent for Delissio overall was 10 percentage points higher among those who had seen the campaign versus those who hadn’t seen it, she added.

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