Schwan to Football Fans: Pizza is No. 1

Marshall, Minn. — You hear the phrase “We’re No. 1” a lot during football season, and when it comes to “home tailgating” – TV football viewing parties – frozen pizza leads the league. That’s why The Schwan Food Co., parent to the Freschetta, Tony’s and Red Baron pizza brands, is leaning heavily on a football-themed “Tailgate at Your Place” campaign to target moms aged 25 to 54.“Fall is a key consumption period for the frozen pizza category, and research shows that pizza is the No. 1 food served at home tailgating parties. With this knowledge, we created this fun 2015 campaign,” says Tim Goldsmid, senior director of brand marketing, Schwan’s Consumer Brands.This year’s game plan was tweaked a bit. “In 2014, we did college football sponsorships with 15 designated schools but learned that it was not a huge driver toward overall participation. We did learn that moms are the ones truly engaged in content such as recipes, home tailgating tips and games. So this year, we opened up the program to include all levels of play.”The campaign runs the entire National Football League season, from Aug. 27, 2015, through Feb. 7, 2016, all the way through the Super Bowl. Participants can enter a sweepstakes on a promotional website (TailgateAtYourPlace.com) and gain additional entries via games, quizzes and recipe submissions. Grand prizes include a check for $8,000, a Best Buy gift card for $2,000 and six months of free pizza for the entire football season. Instant-win prizes include Visa gift cards, Fanatics.com gift cards and pizza prize packs.Because fall is a key selling season for the pizza category, Schwan directed its sales force to obtain quality merchandising with retail partners to align with this promotion, as well as with its coupon efforts and shopper marketing activations. To date, the company is meeting its objectives, Goldsmid says.Success metrics included site traffic figures and number of registrations. Schwan is looking at measurements for depth of engagement with its promotional site such as viewing and uploading recipes and party tips, playing customized games and downloading coupons. “The program is a digital destination used to drive consumers from online to offline and offline to online.”— Clare BeckThe company worked with a number of partners to make this campaign a reality: digital, HelloWorld, Detroit; marketing agency, Edge Marketing, Chicago; package design, Periscope, Minneapolis; public relations, Spong, Minneapolis; media placement, Haworth, Minneapolis; and digital and social advertisement, Space150, Minneapolis. “The program is a digital destination used to drive consumers from online to offline and offline to online,” says Clare Beck, account director at HelloWorld. “We provide coupons throughout the website to drive in-store traffic. Also, codes on pizza boxes invite consumers to enter online for bonus sweepstakes entries.”The program is also being promoted socially. All three pizza brands are promoting it on Facebook and Twitter, posting codes that consumers can enter on the site to earn bonus entries.The goal of Schwan and HelloWorld is to deepen engagement onsite. To that end, participants can upload their own content, take a personality test and answer polls.Beck echoes Goldsmid’s perspective about the mom factor. “We conducted a post-program survey last year and learned that 30% of moms felt that deciding what food to serve is the hardest part of throwing a tailgate party,” she says. “So we made our recipe section more robust by allowing consumers to submit recipes of their own and share with others.”

Schwan to Football Fans: Pizza is No. 1

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