Pizza 73 is throwing its name into the political ring ahead of the federal election as it seeks to differentiate itself from big American brands.

The collaboration with creative agency Daughter and PR agency SpPR puts forth the “P73 Party” in a rollout that emulates political campaigns with a tongue-in-cheek “party platform” and lawn signage.

The creative work, complemented by social-media content and OOH advertising, funnels Albertans to a website where they can access coupons for a free one-topping medium pizza on future digital orders of $9.99 or more.

Pizza 73 marketing director Adam Williamson tells strategy that the Calgary-based QSR is seeking to strike a balance between transactional marketing and brand storytelling with the campaign.

“For us, as a Canadian brand, we thought this was an opportunity to break through and kind of take a step forward,” Williamson says. “Our brand has been very transactional, and we want to kind of move forward and lean more into brand-love, brand-building, activations and campaigns. So we felt like this was an opportunity for us to do that.”

Williamson adds that the work is similar to parent company Pizza Pizza’s foray into less-conventional usage occasions, such as its recent return to 4/20 marketing. While Pizza 73 continues to have a presence in spaces such as the NHL playoffs and Calgary Stampede, Williamson says the brand will also be flexible in how it reacts to unfolding current events and culture.

“We we look at our marketing calendar at what are the moments that we can make up out of thin air about ourselves, that we want to talk about,” Williamson says. “So this one was a little bit more reactive, but we’re a nimble brand so we’re able to jump on these ideas last minute versus, maybe, some other bigger ships that can’t turn as fast.”

Daughter conceptualized and completed the campaign for launch in a two-week period after the snap election was called last month. Williamson says the budget, which totalled between $45,000 to $75,000, was “scrappier” than that of Pizza 73’s recent “Skinner Dinner” promotional work with Edmonton Oilers goalie Stuart Skinner.

“This is obviously very social-first inspired. So for us, we were really going after young families, Gen Z, millennials, to really drive digital conversion into our environment and really have some fun with folks on social media and across the social zeitgeist,” Williamson says.