Building Positivity,

Loyalty and Sales

Repositioning the
Papa John’s Brand Locally.

Papa John’s HLLY (Harrisburg, Lancaster, Lebanon and York) Co-op, made up of more than 22 locally-owned and operated franchise locations was faced with rapidly shifting public perception of the brand during a corporate brand crisis compounded by declining sales and declining loyalty. In addition to the negative public image for Corporate, the pizza industry was faced with major industry shifts driven by food delivery disruptors, crowding the market and diluting markets opportunities.

Gavin took on the regional account with a hands-on, fully integrated approach – shifting attention to identifying consumer influences and low performing tactics, then strategically pivoting investments to higher performance investments supported and verified by clear key performance indicators (KPIs). In addition, the Gavin team worked to weave a strategic public relations approach to create positive community messaging outside of advertising messages to reinforce the commitment to community under the local ownership.

As part of our complete agency management of the account, we collaborated with Papa John’s Corporate marketing teams to focus on an integrated approach that leveraged national offers, coupled with local messages, community outreach and traditional media through broadcast and cable TV, OTT and streaming radio to shift to a positive return.

Our expert digital marketing teams identified opportunities for brand conciseness and reducing agency fees compared to previous agencies, including social profile consolidation which allowed for increased analytics tracking and seamless coordination of regional campaigns, reducing confusion for customers while maximizing dollars.

We relaunched unique offers, incentives and givebacks for the local community by establishing partnerships with local colleges, universities, schools and nonprofit organizations like the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank and Children’s Miracle Network. Our partnership strategies created a halo-effect around the brand, amplifying the local franchise ownership’s commitment to the local market and promoting increased loyalty.

Every action was tracked and managed using leading industry behavior tracking approaches across multiple platforms, while also creating custom tracking dashboards to report on the client’s specific KPIs, including return on ad spend (ROAS), loyalty program rewards and retention purchases, total units, and revenue by platform.