Pizza Hut Melts: Not For Sharing

For hundreds of years, pizza has been a communal food. A meal meant for sharing. Then came Pizza Hut Melts—a handheld pizza meal for one. So to launch this new product, we did the exact opposite of what most brands would do for a big product launch—we told people not to share it.

We paid, bribed, and even negotiated with fans online to prevent them from sharing their Melts (both IRL and on social). Turns out, when you tell people not to do something, it makes them do it even more.

By signing our MDA (Melts Disclosure Agreement), we offered people $100 if they promised never to share.

And when people shared their Melts anyway, we negotiated with them to delete their posts, offering up any prize you could think of (a drone, a new gaming console, a tuba, whatever…) just to get them to take it down.

The Results

Turns out when you tell people not to do something, it only makes them want to do it more. With press from our MDA announcement plus social sharing of our Melts negotiations, we garnered over 2.1 billion impressions for new Pizza Hut Melts. In a world of sharing, we chose to launch our new product by doing the exact opposite, leading to Pizza Hut’s most successful product launch of the year.

Pizza Hut Melts: Not For Sharing

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