Pizza Hut’s Crazy Cheesy Crust Pizza: Maybe Not Entirely Crazy

In the movie Mystic Pizza, Jojo, the character played by Lili Taylor, asks Julia Roberts’s Daisy, “What the hell do you think Leona really puts in that pizza?” The answer for most pizza chains is usually some combination of three key ingredients: dough, cheese, and tomato sauce (with a variety of toppings). The market for pizza is huge—Americans consume about 3 billion pizzas a year, accounting for about $40 billion in revenues. There are a large number of independent (65 percent) and chain (35 percent) restaurants, all competing for a proverbial slice of the pie. A number of these stores are local, catering to neighborhoods in the towns and cities they are located in. At the same time, the big three chains—Pizza Hut, Domino’s, and Papa John’s—dominate the national landscape and are engaged in a constant battle for gastric dominance over the stomachs and wallets of the consumers.

While some chains have focused on the quality of the products (most notably Domino’s, with its recent emphasis on product improvement on the basis of consumer research), the ingredients, and the consequent appeal to the family consumer, Pizza Hut has often taken a different route. The chain often launches “extreme” pizzas, having introduced the world to such cheese-intensive concepts as the Stuffed Crust Pizza (regular and ultimate versions), the “pizza in a pizza,” and now the Crazy Cheesy Crust Pizza, a new pizza that comes surrounded by 16 circular pockets of cheese that can be pulled off and eaten separately. Cheesy sticks physically bundled with your pizza, anyone?

Clearly, the launch of such a product is predicated on the existence of a customer segment that Pizza Hut caters to that hungers for any concept that maximizes the amount of cheese per square inch! Unlike Yogi Berra, who famously quipped, “You’d better cut the pizza in four pieces because I am not hungry enough to eat six,” they are likely to embrace the craziness of the product—all 16 pockets of it.

At the same time, there are several noteworthy aspects of these products that give us insight into Pizza Hut and its marketing. The company is able to generate a lot of buzz, both positive and negative, that gives Pizza Hut a lot of free publicity. Count as part of that buzz both this blog post and this Fortune story (I’m quoted) about the trend to name and promote certain foods as “crazy.”

Also, many of these Pizza Hut concepts tend to be available for limited time periods. This has several benefits. First, it creates urgency among those that are genuinely attracted to the concept. Second, it limits any negative fallout to a finite horizon. Third, it gives the company the opportunity to “test” a number of concepts that can then be assessed for a regular launch. Fourth, if the cost associated with the concept is high, it helps to limit losses while at the same time reinvigorating interest in Pizza Hut and its other products. Fifth, it communicates to a consumer that even if she is not particularly enamored by any one concept, Pizza Hut is constantly innovating to provide the consumer different experiences with pizza. The implication of all this innovating is that if you were to go to a Pizza Hut, you might be surprised by some innovative product you might encounter.

So whilst the health conscious among us might cringe at the Crazy Cheesy Crust Pizza, one cannot deny that it does bring Pizza Hut into our “evoked” set whenever we think about pizza. And for a category that is so competitive, this is an important accomplishment.

In the movie Independence Day, Captain Steven Hiller, the character played by Will Smith, exclaims, “I have got to get me one of these,” after starting up an alien ship. For Pizza Hut and its franchisees, one route to offering its customers something out of this world is constant innovation with cheese, dough, and sauce.

Pradeep K. Chintagunta is the Joseph T. and Bernice S. Lewis Distinguished Professor of Marketing at Chicago Booth.