Boston Pizza has launched a brand refresh complete with a new logo as it moves into music partnerships in an attempt to connect to a younger demographic.
The hero creative by full-service agency partner Mekanism presents a party vibe as part of a rebrand that embraces modern, streamlined design.
Kicking off today, the rebrand coincides with a partnership with Live Nation that offers VIP experiences to music lovers and live entertainment across BP’s 300-plus patios all summer long.
“We have not done anything at this scale for decades,” James Kawalecki, Boston Pizza VP of marketing, tells strategy. “[It’s] a different way of portraying the brand than we ever have before.”
Boston Pizza’s rondelle logo is now bi-chromatic red and white and dispenses with the blue tone that’s been a staple of the chain for decades.
As Kawalecki says updating the logo is part of Boston Pizza’s biggest brand refresh ever.
“We also understood that when you have something that’s been in market for decades, you have an incredible amount of equity built in a symbol or a logo, where we didn’t want to completely abandon it,” Kawalecki says.
The rebrand is part of a strategy to appeal to a younger demographic that is Boston Pizza’s largest opportunity segment.
“So with that kind of young and social demographic in mind, we looked at their passion points, and we understood that the Live Nation partnership made a ton of sense,” Kawalecki says. “Aligning ourselves with the biggest music property in Canada was a no brainer.”
Live Nation represents the largest sponsorship deal outside of sports in the restaurant’s history, Kawalecki says. The partnership will offer individual pizza giveaways for Live Nation ticketholders in the 24 hours before and after every Live Nation shows.
Boston Pizza was inspired to collaborate with Live Nation after seeing similar partnerships carried out by music-linked best-in-class brands such as RBC, Labatt and Budweiser, Kawalecki says.
Simultaneously, Boston Pizza will be working with musicians to set up performances at locations across Canada.
“A really cool component of this national [Live Nation] deal is how we’re going to bring music to life in all of our restaurants and hopefully locally in all the communities we operate in across Canada.”
The refresh comes amid a COVID-19 bounce back has been slow and gradual.
In the latest quarter, Boston Pizza reported spikes in same restaurant sales of 4.4%, and a record-high first quarter for total franchise sales.
“We’ve always done well with the sports crowd and the sports bar,” Kawalecki says. “We’ve done well with the younger demo, but again, it was that demographic that we isolated as the biggest opportunity the brand had to make a significant, significant gain in traffic and sales.”
Boston Pizza is working with Heads and Tales PR for the summer campaign, which include media work by UM Canada.
