Boston Pizza is expanding the scope of its hockey-playoff platform.

The premiere of a 30-second video this week launches “Parade Bus,” a campaign created with Mekanism that will evolve throughout the NHL playoffs. With each successive round of the postseason, Boston Pizza will launch a new 15-second spot to build on a narrative that sees hockey fans taking rival supporters’ dismissive “plan-the-parade” comments literally.

Boston Pizza is looking to improve on 2024’s playoff work by teasing the rollout out over a couple months of playoff broadcasts. The casual-dining chain says last year’s “30 Years of Suffering” campaign helped increase national same-store sales by 14% while boosting brand perception by 11%.

“We want to make sure people don’t burn out,” says James Kawalecki, vice-president of marketing at Boston Pizza. “When you have one spot for all four rounds, I think you start to lose the quality of the impression because people do give up, they’re like ‘oh yeah, I know that spot.’ So the goal with all (of this year’s) different executions of creative is to make sure we don’t wear out, but hopefully it’s also entertaining for Canadians.”

This year’s material strikes a growing tone of added optimism, Kawalecki says, to build off of the 2024 work that aimed to bring fans from all Canadian clubs together with the hopes of ending Canada’s lengthy Stanley Cup drought.

“It’s been 31 years and a lot of defeats, a lot of close calls. This one’s all about, hey, let’s just manifest this,” Kawalecki tells strategy. “That line of, ‘why don’t you start planning the parade,’ and the great takeaway of ‘yeah why don’t we?’ We love the optimism of that who-knows-what’s-possible idea.”

Mekanism and Boston Pizza have plotted ahead for multiple scenarios as the playoffs unfold, with the possibility that all Canadian teams could be eliminated early – or that one could actually win the thing – among them.

As an added layer, Boston Pizza also developed a “Champion Room Spray” designed to capture the essence of a hockey locker-room, post-victory. The bottled scent that blends notes of champagne, Canadian lager, used hockey pucks and hockey gear will be available at select restaurants. Kawalecki says stunt activations, PR and experiential influencer activity are also in the works.

“I think the most successful campaigns often have elements that are more than just TV,” Kawalecki says. “So having different ways, be it influencer, experiential, gives you the best chance of reaching more people … so it’s a really fun way of kind of aligning people. This is what a championship would smell like.”

“Parade Bus” is running on premise at Boston Pizza locations and nationally across TV and OLV, social, podcasts and sports-focused digital platforms.

Mekanism (formerly Camp Jefferson) led creative, UM led media and Heads+Tales led PR.