No one out pizzas the Hut

I usually charge a premium dollar for marketing advice.

Correction, a super premium dollar. Mostly because agencies today want it good and they want it fast. Therefore, by the Inverse Relationship of 21st Century marketing, they cannot have it Cheap.

But today, a day after my birthday and the anniversary of Round Seventeen, I'm giving it away for FREE.

And I'm giving it to a client that in no way deserves it.

Last year, at this very time I was involved in the pitch for the crown jewel of creative advertising. To say it was a miserable experience is to marginalize the word miserable.

We spent countless days dicking around their fakakta deals, trying to put in to English what was clearly devised in Cyrillic.

"It's two pizzas, with any choice of toppings for $6.99. But they have to be medium pizzas. And you can only choose any toppings for one then pay the regular price for the second pizza. Any toppings cannot include double meat. Offer not valid in 48 continental states."

Or something like that.

We also spent weeks trying to cram every item on their $5 Flavor Menu into a 30 second TV spot. When that wasn't schlocky enough, we had to make it work for a :15.

But by and large the most monumental waste of time was sitting down with a bunch of digital ninjas to try and reconfigure Pizza Hut's social presence. And create the obligatory Frivolous Fuckwadian Digital Knick Knacks™.

We had scavenger hunts up the wazoo.
Mindless photo uploads.
And some genius proposed turning the pizza box into a turntable. Of course some douchebiscuit company had already done that.

Here's my FREE advice with regards to social media, and this applies to so many other companies as well, particularly those with piss poor products or services, DON'T DO IT.

Spend your money fixing your shit. Make your pizzas better. Make your stores cleaner. Make your service people, service people. Just don't spend another dime on useless social salesfuckery.

Want proof? Of course you do.

Saunter on over to the Pizza Hut Facebook Page. It's not so much a congregation of fanboys and fan girls raving about the thick cut pepperoni or Garlic Stuffed Gordian Knots as it is a non-stop slew of pissed-off, outraged customers who wouldn't feed this slop to starving children in Sudan.

I found these without touching the scrolling device on my trackpad:

That's not by chance. I've been monitoring their FB page for almost a year now and this happens every day.

So do yourself a favor Pizza Hut, cut the chord. People call you when they're too damn lazy to make a meal or get out the house. It's that simple. They don't waste time thinking about you or your so- called brand. And they don't want to have a conversation with you.

People have got better things to do with their lives. They're not going to spend inordinate amounts of time reading every damn comment on every damn Facebook page...

...oh wait a minute.