╠ Not so Hidden Pizza ╣

Yesterday I'd finally seen enough of this hidden pizza on facebook and twitter to actually trial it. Seems everyone else had a similar idea and thus caused quite a line leading to a 45 min line ride before the pizza.

Now for those of you completely out of the loop there is a hidden pizza restaurant in Melbourne. The idea is that you find the number via the yellow pages website, call up, order your pizza and they give you an address. Now the trick is that the Pizza is free and the restaurant is only open for 2 weeks.

So who is possibly sponsoring this campaign? A Pizza company? Pizza product company? Drinks company? I puzzled my head on this thinking about it. Then I discovered the answer Yellow Pages.

Now depending on which blog you read some people think its amazing, others less so.

My personal opinion is that it is effective and now yellow pages is a little more prevalent in my mind....however it isn't enough to change my habits. So yes I think better of yellow pages and remember its there...But its not enough to stop me using google which is currently much more integrated into my everyday life and also more powerful in most cases.

Now this is only if you recognize Yellow Pages as the sponsor, which is the hard bit. You go to this restaurant and there is no branding at all. It literally is branded as its own restaurant. So the entire feel is nice and everything, but no mention of anything yellow pagey to make you like that brand.

So the actual feeling that I got is actually that perhaps I would like to go to the hidden pizza restaurant again...therefore my brand loyalty is built for that more than yellow pages. Further more you have to wonder how much is spent on this. It isn't a cheap excersize to build and setup something big. Once you consider the time its open, setup and other expenses as well as the fact people will come back multiple times in some cases I'd estimate cost per person at $5 which would be a really hard cost to recoup.

That being said there are still other elements to look at. This is a unique event and for Yellow pages this makes them look quite smart which is good for their business relations. So I'd say this would be a great excersize for increasing business attention for them. This is especially good considering yellow pages is definitely something that would be in decline.

So overall I don't think it's worth it on the consumer level but on the business level I think its incredibly clever marketing and overall I have to say kudos...even though my pizza did seem undercooked...>_>

╠ Of Facebook and Ads ╣

With Critical Hit's launch I decided to use Facebook as the best tool for quick advertising. However I quickly ran into a pitfall. For those of you facebook users think of the amount of ads you see and the amount you click...very minimal.

With facebook ads I learned that they are best used for a non-demanding purpose. Simply showing a product and a price isn't enough. You have to sell the message and that message is easier sold if the link is say look at this site or look at this video and stuff like that so that they don't feel like it's blatant advertising demanding you buy now.

Facebook is certainly a powerful tool. But you need to learn how to use it right.

...And that's the story of how I wasted $50. More blunders coming soon.