To mark the start of the NFL season next month, Pizza Hut is dropping the “pizza” from its name—at least for a little while.
“You can just call us HUT for the next 25 weeks,” the pizza chain wrote in a social media post with an image of a temporarily rebranded Pizza Hut storefront.
On the restaurant’s facade, the “Pizza” part of the chain’s wordmark is covered up by a red banner showing a football; another image shows the word “Pizza” similarly covered by a football banner on a store marquee.
Don’t expect your local Pizza Hut to cover up its logo, however. The “rebrand” is actually just a stunt, the chain says, playing off the dual meaning of the word hut in its brand name, which quarterbacks shout in a football snap count. There won’t be a widespread change made to the signage at the shrinking number of Pizza Hut restaurants.
“This is a playful, limited activation deployed at select Pizza Hut locations, designed as a fun nod to our longtime role in football traditions,” Pizza Hut CMO Melissa Friebe tells Fast Company. “This creative take on our signage is simply a reminder to football fans that game day starts with ‘Hut.’”
Pizza Hut’s gimmick rebrand is part of a marketing trend among restaurant chains in the name of creating content. Rather than a work of graphic design, it’s meant to be a fun take on a logo, like IHOP briefly calling itself IHOb by flipping up the last letter in its logo in 2018 to sell more burgers, or Long John Silver’s stunt rebrand swapping out the fish in its logo for a chicken to sell more of the latter last year.
Pizza Hut’s not trying to sell a new product here. What it is trying to do is be top of mind for football fans who want to order pizza. Visually, the chain did it by removing some details of its logo to draw attention to a core brand element.
This is a familiar marketing playbook, and it works. Just look to Levi’s and Heinz covering up their logos for the World Cup, or McDonald’s advertising through just color and scent. Competitor Domino’s released a domino-shaped personal pizza that comes in a box designed like a domino to own the rectangle as its distinctive shape in a category known for circles.
The “rebrand” comes at a challenging time for Pizza Hut. The chain was sold by Yum Brands in June to buyers that include private equity and Yum China Holdings, its China division, which spun off as a separate company in 2016. It said earlier this year it would close nearly 250 U.S. stores.
