Papa John’s Goes VR to Boost Pizza Sales

At the end of 2007 pizza company Papa John’s announced the ability to order a pizza via a mobile device. Today they are announcing a new game which they call an “augmented reality game feature”. The game is part of what looks like a bigger online campaign called Papa John’s Road Trip.

You take your pizza box, turn it upside down, cut out the Camaro car picture, hold it up to your webcam and then play the game using the car picture. You drive around the U.S. and they sprinkle pizza ads in the game.

Seems like a lot of work especially because you may have a piece of the pizza left and won’t want to cut open the box to get to the special decoder image. You can also printout a game piece from the website.

I like the concept but think it would be more usable if they stuck the game piece to the box rather than having to cutup some cardboard and carry around a greasy, pepper smelling box. In the video below, the woman actually seems to carry the entire pizza box upside down to her office – HA! The other questions for the agency who got the check to create this game are:

• does a person who just finished a pizza want offers for more pizza?
• to keep playing day after day as they suggest in the video, you would need to keep the pizza box around – that can’t be a good thing

It’s all about intent with promotions and since the transaction has already completed, I’d rather see PJ push to an email signup and keep the game clean. Or at a minimum they should know if the person has played the game for the first time provide no offers and on multiple return trips, then provide offers. They should also be able to tell whether a person is playing via the computer printout or the pizza box.

Here’s a video of how the game works…