Pizza Hut has made two major creative moves, parting ways with agency The Monkeys, and bringing back ‘Dougie’, the character at the forefront of its advertising in the 1990s.
The return of Dougie has been made on a project basis by marketing agency Step Change.
Dougie, played by actor Diamid Heidenreich, appeared in Pizza Hut’s advertising between 1993 and 1996.
In the new campaign, another delivery boy hurries to the door of a Pizza Hut customer, and is shocked to see Dougie, still in his red cap, open the door.
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The new ad also features the return of the cavalry charge tune, which also used to appear in the brand’s advertising.
Pizza Hut chief marketing officer, Chet Patel, told Mumbrella that the ad was a part of its new brand platform developed by Pizza Hut’s new leadership team, which returns the brand to its roots and leverages the emotional attachment people have with Pizza Hut.
“Everyone has a Pizza Hut story,” Patel said.
“We live in a world void of emotional attachment,” whereas the campaign is “cemented in emotion because we have Dougie back”, he said.
By tugging on the heartstrings of Australians and bringing back their childhood memories of Pizza Hut, Patel said that the campaign was “a celebration of our relationship with Australia”.
A Pizza Hut worker sticking a ‘hot dot’ onto the box is also seen in the ad wearing a ‘Dot Checker’ cap, a reference to Domino’s DOM Pizza Checker, a device which scans the quality of the pizza before it is sent out for delivery.
Up until the beginning of this year, The Monkeys was Pizza Hut’s agency of record. The agency was appointed to the account in 2017 to undertake a major brand revamp.
The Monkeys declined to comment on the movement of the account.