Panago Pizza has undergone a complete brand and menu refresh, backed by new creative and positioning.
Its new national campaign, by agency partner Crew, features the “Panago for it” cri de coeur. The hero spot sees a pizza maker showing off and championing the quality of the chain’s ingredients, before hopping on a moped to hand-deliver a pie to an office worker who’s promptly named “employee of the month.”
Braden Douglas, Crew Marketing Partners’ CEO, who also stepped in as Panago’s fractional CMO, tells strategy that “Panago for it” is about reigniting what makes Panago great, such as chef-created recipes, fresh dough made daily and real Canadian ingredients, features that are prominent in the video.
As Douglas explains, the new work is a rallying cry to unite customers, franchisees and employees alike around one belief: That Panago is the advocate of good pizza.
Last year, Panago called for viewers to submit AI-generated NHL playoff beards, in a campaign that was fun and idea-driven, which Douglas says was good, but ultimately strayed too far from featuring pizza and pizza-related storytelling and from its value proposition.
Douglas says he was embedded directly in Panago’s leadership team to head the transformation as fractional CMO on an eight-month contract after a key resignation so that Panago could stabilize the department and take its time to hire the right fit.
With Panago, he attended leadership meetings, managed and planned budgeting, marketing-team leadership, coaching and represented Panago to suppliers, agencies and collaboration partners.
“I’m a marketer (CMO), but I’m also the owner of an agency, Crew,” Douglas says. “It’s a combination that is quite unique, although as the CMO, I’m very arms-length with Crew during the contract.”
According to Douglas, fractional CMO roles in CPG or other industries are actually less complicated than in QSR. “QSR moves very fast with a lot of activity occurring from menu decisions, promotions, franchisee communication, strategic planning, media and social media.”
The pizza category, Douglas concedes, is going through an interesting challenge. “It’s the top delivery food consumed, with heavy competition and 80% is bought on deal,” he says, adding that most purchases currently occur through some kind of promotion because of a turbulent economy and consumer price sensitivities.
“Every brand wants deeper storytelling, especially for longer-term brand equity building, but what drives immediate results is the promotional-based messaging,” Douglas says. “We’ve tried to build storytelling into OOH and broadcast media and use social and digital for promotional messaging.”
According to Douglas, the challenge is providing great food options that are unique and promotions that resonate to move consumers to purchase, so there’s no race to the bottom price-wise.
Panago’s new campaign runs until Jan. 30 with burst periods of paid (“intermittent heavier media”) media timed to coincide with a heavy fourth-quarter consumption period around the holidays, sports events, get-togethers and parties.
The campaign is integrated and includes British Columbia’s Canucks Radio Network (the province where Panago was founded and has a disproportionate foothold), DOOH, connected TV and digital media in Meta, Google, YouTube, and TikTok.
Work Party is the media agency behind the work and Douglas says the media mix is “always evolving.”
