Papa Johns is stepping up its marketing efforts with a wildly cinematic new brand platform featuring legendary rapper Big Boi and a theme that riffs on the brand’s Back to Better 2.0 strategy: “Better Get You Some.”
In a press release, the company said the “Better Get You Some” campaign “elevates the brand’s pizza superiority and iconic brand promise—Better Ingredients. Better Pizza.—through celebrating the shared emotional truth of pizza devotion.”
The 45-second video is also big, loud and flashy, teeming with special effects and trippy visuals: a UFO-sized pizza snatching up a man with its tractor beam; multi-hued, glitter-speckled lips; animated pizza slices reminiscent of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”; and a brief glimpse of the late artist Bob Ross painting a picture with a pepperoni-and-cheese-pizza canvas.
As Mark Shambura, the brand’s chief marketing officer, explained to Marketing Dive, the campaign is designed to be “as noticeable as possible.”
“With hypnotic visuals, an instantly captivating soundtrack, and a unique, multimedia experience that nods to hip hop, expressionist art and cultural touchstones, the refreshed creative not only features the brand’s premium ingredients, but also celebrates what fans love most about Papa Johns when satisfying all-consuming pizza cravings,” a press release states.
The new brand platform launch is part of Papa Johns’ “deepened commitment to and investment in its marketing efforts” as part of the Back to Better 2.0 initiative. Its goals: Improve audience segmentation, build customer loyalty, drive buzz, increase ROI and offer differentiated category solutions. The Back to Better 2.0 plan was announced in January by then-CEO and president Rob Lynch, who resigned from Papa Johns earlier this month.
“Better Get You Some captures and champions the role pizza devotion plays in all our lives—during big moments and small,” Shambura said in a statement. “Whether it’s cheering on your favorite team during the championship, catching up with friends you haven’t seen in a while or capping off a late-night study session, we’re showcasing those moments when the only thing that will make them better is pizza.”
Shambura came onboard at Papa Johns in May 2023 and named The Martin Agency and Carat as its creative and media agencies. For the video, they recruited veteran music video and advertising director Dave Meyers as well as Big Boi, a Grammy winner, for the hard-driving soundtrack.
As Shambura explained to Marketing Dive, “Part of my goal here, with all marketing that we’re going to do, is to make it as entertaining and as noticeable as possible. We wanted it to disrupt, and we wanted it to find a way to make sure that there is a consistency and an earworm and an exciting way that people can connect to the work. It’s a full-on sensory explosion, it’s more youthful, it’s definitely energetic.”