Huts off to pizza - and pasta

It must be true, I read it in the national press - not to mention on the ITN website. Pizza Hut is changing its name to Pasta Hut in an ambitious £100m brand overhaul. But hang on a minute.

Why would one of the world's biggest eating out businesses be ready to throw away years of brand loyalty and recognition, especially when arch-rival Domino's is proving one of the most resilient operations in the current consumer downturn? This smacks of corporate suicide.

As well as there being something decidedly fishy about this big news, it also had a familiar ring. I happened to be in the United States around April 1st this year, when a very similar story hit the headlines there.

Amid identical straight-faced announcements, Pizza Hut States-side played the same name change gambit as a promotional tie-in for the launch of its latest family-sized pasta offerings. To push its new pastas, the exterior signage at its Dallas headquarters was temporarily replaced with a new Pasta Hut logo, and the company's print, television and website advertising all proclaimed 'Pizza Hut is now Pasta Hut.'
So has the British end of the Pizza Hut empire been playing the same leg-pull with the public and media over here? Well, what do you think?

The UK website gives a huge hint. It features a daily on-line poll asking customers if they prefer the Pasta Hut or Pizza Hut name? Almost 70%, as of 4pm on Sunday, wanted to stick with the pizza identity.

What we have is some masterly PR and marketing ' reworking an existing campaign and making it stick in a new market.

Sections of the UK press appear to have swallowed the scam whole, without a question and even printing the PR pictures of workmen up ladders changing signs.

The nationals might be excused, as they have had something a little more pressing on their minds. But others should have known better. Some, however, did see through it - The Independent and The Telegraph among them.

The real story appears to be this. The chain is trying to present a healthier image and intends temporarily to rename 30 or so of its Pizza Hut branches as Pasta Hut as part of that objective. It will be emphasising nutritional changes to its menu and getting customers to try its pasta and salad ranges as well as its pizzas. It is adding nine new pasta dishes, and backing it all up with TV ads.

The chain has upgraded its salad bar and decreased salt and saturated fat across its menu. It aims to push pasta sales up to around 10% of the total, from the 3% to 4% at present.

And, what a way to do it? The 'name change' has certainly put the brand right in the public eye, underlined its healthy aspirations, while probably not harming its pizza sales either. Of course, whether pasta is any healthier than pizza is debatable, but it's all about perception 'and as this exercise shows, health makes headlines.

Pizza Hut is already well placed for tougher times. It's one of the country's most recognisable and most visited eating-out brands. It also has an established strong following among the under 25 market, which may well prove the most recession-proof audience. This should simply reinforce all that.

This really is clever, and perhaps even award-winning, stuff ' and in the States it worked, with pasta sales up, especially in delivery.

First published in M&C Report Online, October 2008