Branding News South Africa

First 'Brand Wars' initiative evaluates pizza

The recently launched 'Brand Wars' initiative, spearheaded by Andrew Ross, MD of Havas Sports & Entertainment South Africa, seeks to find consumer brands and pit them against each other with real time, real world consumer feedback. These findings are then compared against how the brand is perceived by consumers.

The first of these comparisons was aimed at the ever-growing pizza market and so the #PizzaWars began.

First 'Brand Wars' initiative evaluates pizza

"Over the last few months, we've seen overseas-based Pizza businesses open in South Africa and so we decided to compare these new product offerings against the stalwarts of the local market to see who came out on top," says Ross.

For the challenge, standard pizza menu items were ordered from local companies, Debonairs and Romans and new market-entrants, Pizza Hut and Domino's. All orders were made within minutes of each other and then a blind tasting was held within the company to get the results.

"We specifically decided on these four as they all offer oven-baked pizza as opposed to wood-fired, that we felt was a slightly different product offering."

All four companies were judged on tastiest pizza through a blind taste testing, value per slice, delivery time and overall brand experience.

Debonairs keeps top spot

For delivery time, Debonairs came out on top with Roman's Pizza having the best value per slice. Domino's came out tops for the tastiest slice, but the overall brand experience belonged to Debonairs.

"We are overwhelmed by the amount of interest and support from both the Industry and the public alike. So based on this, we'll continue the initiative with another brand war starting next month," concludes Ross.

All results and downloadable infographics can be found on www.brandwars.co.za.

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