Papa John’s is serving up something new on the pizza marketing menu with its latest campaign that aims to capture the indescribable feeling of craving pizza. The new ad, “Better Get You Some,” articulates the brand’s historic positioning: “Better Ingredients, Better Pizza.” However, this time, the pizza-maker enlisted the vocal stylings of legendary Southern rapper Big Boi of Outkast and the visual curation of award-winning director Dave Meyers, most notably known for his work with Missy Elliott and Kendrick Lamar.
In the 45-second film, Big Boi describes the compelling nature of pizza in the language of pizza devotion instead of industry vernacular. His opening line demands, “Gimme that ooey, gooey, crispy, crunchy, mouthwatering [Papa John’s]” over an infectious and hypnotic beat. Meyers accompanies these lyrics with a trippy visual aesthetic that simultaneously feels both of the internet and a call back to the 90s. When I spoke with the seven-time Grammy-winning ATLien about the campaign, Big Boi described the brand’s new creative direction as “mesmerizing.”
This is quite the departure from the pizza category, which typically focuses on cheese pulls, loaded toppings, and stuff-in-crust innovations as a source of differentiation—and that’s a good thing. In a saturated category, like the pizza market, where differentiation is incremental and often easily imitable, a focus on differentiation can quickly lead to parity. That pretty much sums up where the pizza industry is today: a sea of sameness. However, instead of following suit, Papa John’s has seemingly decided to focus on distinctiveness instead of differentiation.
The delineation between distinctiveness and differentiation might be subtle on the surface, but their implications are stark. Product differentiation focuses on key value propositions that a company uses to position its offerings relative to an identified competitor set. These propositions are typically prioritized based on product performance and are almost always presented in contrast to other players in the category to influence a consumer’s product selection process. However, in most cases, these differences are often indistinguishable to large portions of the population or, worse, unimportant. Therefore, a focus on differentiation might only amount to different shades of grey in the minds of consumers—or maybe even wallpaper to which consumers pay little to no mind at all.
Distinctiveness, on the other hand, focuses on memorability or how the brand stands out in people’s minds regardless of the category. This is why so many marketers attempt to leverage culture as a marketing vehicle; it gives credence and context to the brand outside its typical categorical constraints. By attaching itself to contextual adjacencies, the brand can potentially stand out in the zeitgeist and garner more cognitive real estate in consumers’ minds.
Put plainly, differentiation is about being different—a comparable metric—and distinctiveness is about being memorable—a category-independent metric. It’s clear that Papa John’s got the memo because not only has it deviated from the category’s homogeneity with this campaign, but it has also abandoned its own playbook.
Gone are the days of Papa John’s professing its love of pizza and dedication to pizza superiority by way of its founder, John Schatter, who resigned from the company in 2018 amidst much-deserved backlash for using a racial slur during a conference call. After Schatter’s departure, former NBA Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neil joined the board of the imbroglio brand and became its spokesman to garner trust with the community and help rework its meaning. During my interview with Papa John’s CMO, Mark Shambura, he told me that “this was an opportunity to break out of the category conventions in a new way.”
To do this, the company invested more resources into its marketing efforts. It brought on a new creative partner, the Virginia-based Martin Agency, to help the brand express its “Back to Better” strategy in a more distinctive way. As Shambura put it, “This is an evolution of the preexisting brand platform. We’re moving from saying it to showing it.”
During our interview, Danny Robinson, the newly minted CEO of Martin, the creative shop responsible for the campaign, echoed Shambura’s sentiment. According to Robinson, “The pacing, the quick shots, and the high energy of the campaign were intended to capture the feeling of pizza craving as opposed to making a rational argument.” Papa John’s isn’t trying to differentiate itself in the pizza category, per se; it’s trying to take a bigger slice of cognitive space among pizza devotees by speaking to them in a language they understand, the irrational emotion of crave.
Big Boi caps off the spot with the line, “Better pizza, better ingredients, better get you some”—a call to action that feels more like he’s putting you on game than selling you a pie. In his words, the Atlanta-based Papa John’s “wanted that Atlanta sauce and I’m here to spread it.” Indeed, his presence on the track provides a layer of texture for the campaign that gives the brand something it never quite had before: a voice.
We’ve heard the voice of its racist founder for years, and we’ve seen the face of its subsequent frontman, Shaq, but what was the personality of the Papa John’s brand itself? That’s the real takeaway here: distinctiveness is mandatory for brand success. However, to be distinctive, you must have your own voice. Otherwise, you’ll enviably be bound for mimicry and mediocrity. I’m not sure where Papa John’s is going next, but the distinctive nature of the campaign—from a brand we are, in many ways, meeting for the first time—is definitely off to a good start.